


I Have Faith In Nights

by DaintyBoots



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Anal Sex, And Derek is down with that, Angst, Bathing/Washing, Cop!Derek, Crime, Cynicism, Depression, Derek has an inner monologue like the Fight Club narrator but meh, Drug Use, Graphic Description, Hand Jobs, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, I'm not going to say Prostitute!Stiles because he's not cool with that, Implied Past Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mean hard streets etc, No seriously Stiles is a street punk, Panic Attacks, So much cynicism, So much snarky cynicism, Tattooed Stiles, Violence, Withdrawal, implied mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:24:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaintyBoots/pseuds/DaintyBoots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek had always thought his ability to pick up strays was a bit of a hindrance. But then he met Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really should not be getting myself into this. 
> 
> Unbeta'd. Forgive and point out mistakes.

On reflection, Derek thought, it was all Greenberg’s fault. It had, afterall, been his idea to generously promote Derek.

Fucking Greenberg.

Some promotion, Derek thought, as the soles of his shoes snapped against the dirt-grey linoleum floor. Detective Hale, Narcotics Division. Admittedly, it was slightly snappier than Officer Hale, White Collar Division. But with the shiny new title came a shitload of new responsibilities. Responsibilities like leaping over rotting barbed fences and aggressively shoving your badge under some poor whacked-out junkie’s red-raw nose. It had taken Derek around three months of chest-puffing and alpha male-bonding over beers to realise that he missed his organised desk. He missed his neutral ties. He missed his nine to five. Although wasn’t like he had anyone to come home to, apart from his dogs. Still, it was his right as an American. Also, it meant he could catch up on some reports before watching the Discovery Channel. Sharks were fucking awesome.

But he could give up the sharks for the pay rise. Also, Derek had to admit, he was good at this crap. He could run faster, tackle harder, and slam his hand down on a table better than most people in this division. All those years in the gym and his facial proclivities towards frowning rather than smiling had somehow paid off.  His first month in the job, he simultaneously cracked a case and made the key informant piss himself. This particular little triumph earned him a lot of back-slapping and jovial respect around the office. Derek just felt like a grade A asshole.

“The fuck is going on in that pretty little head of yours Hale? C’mon, we got a live one for questioning.”

Derek smirked as he watched Reyes, better known to her small army of admirers as Erica, slide effortlessly between the closely set desks in the bullpen before sauntering around the corner. Every male in the vicinity’s eyes moved with the sensual sway of her departure. Derek shook his head, feeling his lips quirk up at the corners. Jesus, that girl. She certainly knew how to work them. He regarded her shtick as quite impressive, if he was honest. Narcotics was a male-dominated division, much like every other division, apart from Sex Crimes. If a woman wanted to hold her head above the water (or at least above the gangbang jokes), she had to give as good as she was getting. And Reyes could certainly do that, in her own special sugar-sweet ball-crushing way. Derek understood the appeal, really, he did. If he wasn’t into guys he’d probably share his colleagues’ slightly concussed expression. With a sigh, he followed her out.

“So, want me to get you a pole to go with that strut?”

Erica rolled her eyes, not looking up from the cream-coloured file she was leafing through.

“God’s gifts, baby, can’t hide ‘em.”

“Really? God does tank tops and push-up bras now?”

She threw a light punch at his arm, simultaneously sweeping her long blonde curls back, allowing the officer at the incoming files desk to get a whiff of her perfume. The poor kid nearly passed out.

“Just because I’m not your _type_ Hale, doesn’t mean you have to go be a little bitch.”

Derek narrowed his eyes at her. It wasn’t that he was closeted or anything, but try telling a group of hard-nosed detectives that you like to suck dick, and all they can think is that you want to suck _their_ dick. And considering the beer guts and wedding rings on a lot of these guys, Derek thought he might give it a miss. Reyes only found out when she made a not-so-subtle pass at him after a night out at the bar, and he turned her down.

Well, you could never accuse Erica Reyes of lacking confidence.

In a hasty bid to change the subject, Derek enquired as to who they were questioning for the case today. They’d been sitting on this one for the past month. The north side of the city had recently been flooded with the purest smack anyone had seen in years.  China white, and appearing as if out of thin air on every street corner. For the north side, it meant a sudden panicked squabble for authority, numerous turf battles and overall a massive increase in drug-related crime. For them, it meant nothing but half-assed leads and dead ends. No one wanted to talk, even less than usual. Worse still, there were signs of the smack seeping into downtown, right at the station’s doorstep. “A matter of pride”, the Chief called it. All Derek was wondering what this matter of pride would weigh in cups of coffee and wasted all-nighters.  He pondered aloud at who could possibly give them any information on this goddamn case.

“Good fuckin’ question. They got in Stiles, they think he might be able to give us some inside at least on what’s cooking around the street corners.”

“Stiles? Who’s Stiles?”

She looked up, still rapidly chewing and snapping at the gum in her mouth.

“Shit, totally forgot you’ve never met Stiles. You’re in for a treat.”

Derek sighed. She said that about the last “regular” they had brought into the station for questioning. And Binky tried to bite his goddamn ear off. When a man who refers to an umbrella as his legal advisor and probably hasn’t had a shower since Reagan was president tries to bite your ear off, you begin to think longingly of the times when all you had to worry about was financial records and paperwork.

Reyes laughed, as if she could see the little scenario that was playing out in his head. She flattened herself against the door, her hand finding the handle.

“C’mon hot stuff, he won’t bite, promise.”

On reflection, Derek still laughs at that.

He had no time to think of a snappy comeback because she was already swinging the door open. And there, like the parting of the curtains on the opening night, centre stage, sitting at the table, was Stiles.

Well, Stiles’s tattoos. Because that’s all Derek could see, when Reyes opened the heavily reinforced door. Tattoos. Hundreds of them, some big, some small, all littering pale skin. They seemed to attack his eyes, loud and obnoxious, like some hardcore punk song, like a shot straight to the nervous system. Some of the tattoos were intricate, like the two tribal wolves that clung to either side of an ivory neck, or the taut sleeve of an unintelligible mish-mash of similarly tribal symbols that curled all the way down a left arm. Others were fucking ridiculous, smiley faces, stars, random song lyrics and swear words, all clearly homemade and prison-grown. Some were overlapping, some were poor cover-ups. The only reason Derek stopped tracking their movements was because a grimy off-white wife beater with a frayed neckline interrupted his progress.

It was only then his mind seemed to realise that there was someone attached to the tattoos. Angular, Derek thought. That’s how he would describe him, angular. Perhaps on the slightly alarming side of thin, he was all cheekbones and elbows and sharp, intelligent eyes. Sliding into the seat opposite him, Derek felt those eyes slide lazily onto him, taking in every aspect of his appearance. He felt like he was being x-rayed in double quick time. He mentally shook himself. Come on Hale, this kid couldn’t be more than seventeen. Stiles leant forward, resting his cheeks in his fists, his mouth slipping into a devilish grin.

“Well _helloooo_ sailor. Detective Reyes, you’ve been holding out on me. Where’d you get this cutie pie?”

His voice was like honey, low and drawling sweet, but with a strange hoarseness that punctuated the end of each sentence. All Derek could do was awkwardly smirk into his pile of files as he situated himself. Reyes, on the other hand, rolled her eyes impressively, kicking the door closed with her pointed boot heel.

“Stiles, this is Detective Hale, he’s just transferred into the division.”

“That so? Well, it’s a pleasure to meet ya, Detective Hale.”

Derek grunted an affirmative greeting back, still leafing through the small library Reyes wanted on the desk. She ignored his progress, instead choosing to lean towards Stiles, her scarlet talons tapping out a familiar rhythm against the surface.

“So, any idea why you’ve been brought in today Stiles?” she asked with a kind of sickly sweet formality Derek was slowly growing accustomed to. It came as a twin, an offset, to the sudden bouts of ferocity that she was prone to indulge when the suspect got stubborn.

“Nope.”

Stiles bubblegum-popped the ending of his answer, before turning away from Reyes quite obviously, instead switching his attention to Derek. In the interest of police interrogation, it seemed he had no choice but to look at Stiles directly. At first, all he noticed was that his eyes were amber. But although the guy seemed to be looking at him casually enough, Derek was at a loss to why he was feeling so uncomfortable. It took him a few brief moments before he realised how fucking _insolent_ the kid’s gaze was. If Stiles’s quick glance had made him feel like he was being x-rayed, his unwavering attention felt like he was doing a very sloppy dissection of Derek’s internal organs, swishing around his guts with the sharp end of a pencil. Call him paranoid, but he never had he encountered such blatant rudeness in a person’s gaze before. And he had grown up with four brothers. To say it threw him off guard was an understatement.

Fortunately, Reyes seemed blissfully unaware of the mental wrestling match Derek seemed to be having with himself. She was flicking disinterestedly through the files, every now and then glancing up at the impassive Stiles.  

“Well, we just want a little chat. So, what you been up to these days kiddo?”

“Nothing much, staying out of trouble. You know me.”

“Damn right I do, that’s why I’m asking. Having some fun?”

“If by fun you mean giving head to some middle-aged closet case in the backseat of his mother-in-law’s Honda Civic, then yeah, having the fucking time of my life.”

Derek managed to keep his flinch in check. He had known exactly what Stiles was the moment he saw him. Most of the rent boys he’d met were open about what they did, even wore it with a kind of battered pride. But Stiles...Stiles came across as downright obnoxious about it, as if daring you to look down on him, and so help you God if you try and pity him. The interview had barely started and Derek could already see the stamp across the length of Stiles’s vocal cords: Fuck you and fuck you for asking.

Reyes seemed unperturbed however, and simply leant back in her chair, crossing her legs in what shouldn’t be, but somehow was, a power stance. “When I said fun,” she began, “I was referring to any new produce that might be out on the corners at the moment. Anything...particularly...pure. ”

The silence that followed was impenetrable. Stiles glanced from Erica to Derek and back again, as if daring either of them to elaborate. Then, without so much as a warning, he began to laugh. It wasn’t a happy laugh, more like a jagged blade to a raw jugular, with a peculiar hoarse cough ripping through it. For the twelfth time in the ten minutes that he had been in Stiles’s company, it occurred to Derek that the kid might not be in the best of health. 

“C’mon dude, are you seriously trying this shit on me? I know fuck all about where the new gear comes from, all I know is that it’s there and it’s pretty fuckin’ special. That’s it. That’s all I know.”

“So Leon or any of those guys aren’t gettin’ a cut or...?”

Stiles shook his head resolutely, like a particurly spiky puppy trying to rid its ears of water. “Lee totally would tell me, besides; it’s for sure not anyone we know. Word is it’s some kind of ghost man.”

“Ghost man?” Derek had finally managed to reign in the little girl he had inexplicably allowed to parade all around the interrogation room since meeting Stiles. In any case, he was relieved to find that his tongue was no longer stuck to the roof of his mouth.His confidence increased slightly when the glare Stiles threw at him was without heat, simply an affirmative nod.

“Yeah, a ghost man, y’know, no connections, no base, no nothing. Dude’s a ghost.”

Reyes let her chair fall forward with a sharp clip and let out an exasperated sigh. “Well your ghost seems to be managing to sell grade A heroin on the corners all over the north side. Pretty impressive for a departed soul, right? Stiles?

But Stiles seemed to have lost interest in the conversation altogether, staring instead at the space between Derek and Erica’s heads. A slightly unfocused look had glazed over his eyes. Before Derek could ask, Erica sighed again, flipped open a separate file and tapped at the words “ _Suspected untreated attention deficit disorder”._ She impatiently snapped her talons in front of the kid’s nose.

“Stiles? _Stiles._ Yo. Stiles. Ground control to Major Tom. STILES.”

Stiles slowly blinked a couple of times before noticeably brightening. “I fuckin’ love that song, dude. Bowie is the _man_. But he’s had his fair share of fuck-ups. Like _Let’s Dance,_ that tune was one steaming heap of-“

Reyes stood up suddenly, cutting off what sounded like the start of a rambling critique of the shifting musical genres of David Bowie. “Okay, okay. I’m getting a coffee, I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing that will enable me to deal with your special brand of bullshit at this hour Stiles.” She pushed the remainder of the files over to Derek and flounced out of the room, closing the door was a loud bang. Probably pissed that this was the first time ever that at least one of the guys in the room didn’t check her out as she left, Derek thought. Yeowch. He was getting cattier every day. He needed new drinking buddies.

“I get it, more a Rolling Stones fan then.”

Derek turned back to a smirking Stiles and nodded in agreement, hoping that his expression didn’t betray hazy memories of Erica drunkenly table dancing to “Brown Sugar” on his first night out with the division. He liked his balls just where they were, thanks very much. Hoping his cough concealed his grin, he supplied “Well, you could never accuse the Stones of being inconsistent.”

Stiles’s eyes brightened with sudden amused interest. The supreme disdain Derek had felt weighing on him ever since he entered the room seemed to lift slightly as Stiles nodded vigorously. “Yeah, totally right there bro, apart from like “Miss You” or something, but like, even then, they totally put a swagger spin on it right? But like, probably too fuckin’ consistent right? I mean, they’re nearly seventy fucking years old and Mick Jagger’s still prancing around the stage and everyone’s like _ewww put it awaaay_. I mean, let it go. Glory days are over dude. At least that’s one thing I’ll never have to worry about. You know, getting that old.”

The heartbeat of silence that filled the room was unmissable. Stiles looked at bit surprised at himself, at his sudden willingness to speak. A part of Derek, the part that had been fascinated by his mother’s psychology books when he was a teenager, suspected that for the most part, all Stiles did was talk. He wasn’t used to speaking. He followed Stiles’s averted gaze down to his hands, which were long and thin, stamped with numerous symbols and letters. One of his palms had a grotesque yellow smiley face while the other had what looked like a beautiful intricate Celtic design. His knuckles, in sharp gothic font, bore the legend “SOURWOLF”. Derek couldn’t fail to notice Stiles’s nails which were practically bitten down to the quick, leaving nothing but tiny slivers surrounded by red raw skin.

“What’s that mean then? Sour wolf?”

Stiles turned over his hands, laying them flat on the table, inspecting them as if he too was trying to understand the meaning of the ink that was sewn into his own skin. “It’s from a dream I have sometimes.”

“A good dream?” Derek couldn’t help but inquiring. He was suddenly unnerved by this slightly childlike persona that now seemed to fill every inch of Stiles’s skinny features. The kid had gone through about five different mood shifts since he’s entered the room. If this was a tactic, it was working splendidly. Derek could practically feel the emotional whiplash that was seeping through his pores, violently slamming him forward into the steering wheel.

“Jesus man, are you a fuckin’ cop or a shrink?” Stiles snorted. And yep, there’s the old gear slamming him back into the driver’s seat again. Derek offered an apologetic smile and cast around for another conversation gateway to this spiky little fucker. Obvious route would be the tattoos, but he was sure Stiles would get irritated fast if he continued to question every inch of his skin. The prostitution gig was hardly light conversation, no matter what spin Erica put on it. Apart from these distinguishing features, the only thing Derek knew about him was his name.

“Stiles is a pretty unusual name.”

Stiles grunted in agreement, apparently transfixed by the moth-spotted light fixture above Derek’s head.

“Where’d you find a street name like that?” Derek knew he had once again found his in as Stiles began to laugh in his strange hoarse way. “What do you think this is man, The fucking _Wire?_ My name’s Stiles ‘cause my last name’s Stilinski. I had it before I knew what a fuckin’ street name was, and didn’t really feel like trading it in for Rat Piss or Dog Head or whatever.”

Derek grinned before looking down at the first page in one of the files. “It says here that your real name is – “

Stiles held up a hand, the smiley face on it gloating at Derek.“Nope. Nu-uh. This atmosphere in this place is already depressing enough without being fuckin’ insulted by that motorway pile-up of a name.”

He hoped the nod he gave was understanding and compassionate as opposed to the slightly surreal amusement he was feeling right now. “Regrettable names aside, you’re a native of here right?” he asked. Stiles gave a hum of assent. “Yep. Born and bred here. My mom wasn’t from here though. She wasn’t even born in the city.” Seeing that Derek wasn’t going to cut him off or somehow steer him to another topic, he continued. “Yeah, she wanted to be an actress or something. Kinda hopped all over the place, managed to get herself a habit and then settled here to spread her love.” The smirk that had leaked across Stiles’s face was entirely forced. Derek didn’t like it. He awkwardly lumbered in the opposite direction of the mother’s occupation. “Where was your mother born?”

“Place called Beacon Hills I think.”

“No shit.”

The words were out of Derek’s mouth before he could stop them, but he was too busy trying to sweep his dropped jaw off the floor to really care too much. In response to Stiles’s raised eyebrow, he elaborated. “Uh, that’s where I’m originally from. My family still live there.”

“No shit.”

“Yeah.”

Stiles sat back, clearly charmed with the revelation. “So if my mom had stayed in Beacon Hills, I’d have probably known you.” Derek, not wanting to correct the obvious logical flaws in that vision, nodded. “Probably, yeah. It’s a pretty small town.” Seemingly entirely delighted with this past possibility, Stiles breathed harshly on the stainless steel of the table in front of him, and drew, with his index and middle finger, two parallel lines which moved into a kind of two-pronged fork shape before the two lines met into one single line.

“Different paths eh?”

“Yeah. Different paths.”

Derek was still trying to comprehend the sudden flash of melancholy that had rippled through him when Reyes re-entered. Handing a coffee to Derek and putting her own down, she took a can of soda out from under her arm and slammed it, along with a chocolate bar, down on the table. Derek was still trying to get used to these occasional glimpses of maternal softness that seemed to flare up in Erica. He wasn’t sure if it suited her, but he liked it. Having a heart became her enormously.

After a few more perfunctory questions, whatever softness Reyes possessed had evaporated quickly. It would have been clear to a five year old that Stiles obviously knew something. But he kept on insisting that he didn’t know the dealers or their names, he got the gear through a third person, he never hustled on those corners so he had never seen any other deals go down. Any childlike wonder Derek had observed earlier was now replaced with a feline grin. Stiles didn’t care if they knew he was lying. He just wasn’t going to tell.

After another thirty minutes of whacking their heads against a brick wall, Reyes made a signal to Derek that she had decided to call it a night. For all of his curiosity about the kid, Derek agreed. Stiles had been the fourth person they had interviewed that evening and frankly, it didn’t look like they were going to get any further with him.

“Okay Stiles, you’re free to go.”

Stiles stood up unsteadily. Towards the end of the interview he’d acquired a much more peaky appearance, and Derek could detect a faint shiver running up and down his body. On getting to his feet he wrapped his arms around his torso convulsively. Derek noticed that although his clothes were grimy and clearly were not his size, they seemed to hang off him in an elegant fashion. The thought left his head when, in his haste to leave the interrogation room Stiles ran headlong into the table and it was only that Derek caught him that he narrowly avoided braining himself on the surface.

Derek set him straight as best he could and Reyes gently led him out. Stiles was clearly starting to feel ill for a fix, but he attempted to compose himself as he walked out into the main hall of the station. With Derek and Reyes flanking him, he waved cheekily at O’Brien, one of the toughest cops in the division, and blew a kiss at Lloyd, their live-in drunk who pissed on squad cars, because his arrest would usually result in a cup of coffee.

They walked out onto the station steps, a place where a thousand cigarette butts came to die. God, Derek hated this city, with its stench and its greyness. When Stiles began to move down the steps, Reyes caught his arm, a sudden look of concern etched on her face, like she’d been holding it in for the past couple of hours.

“You keep yourself safe, ‘kay? Clinic every month, and don’t share-“

“Yeah yeah Detective, I’ll be a good boy, promise.”

With a jaunty salute, Stiles made his unsteady way down the steps, his hands shoved deep into his jean pockets. Before Derek could stop himself, he followed Stiles down the steps and asked him the question that had been itching at him for the past half an hour. He could feel Reyes’s eyes boring into his back when he did it, and the moment he returned to her she asked him “what their little powwow was about”. Derek shrugged innocently and mumbled something about telling Stiles to come forward if he sees particularly suspicious.

Ignoring Reyes’s incredulous stare, he followed Stiles’s progress down the street. His off-white wife beater was the only thing that picked him out; his tattoos made his skin seem to melt into the landscape around him, as if he was sinking into the city’s surroundings, as if it was swallowing him up. He and Reyes made their way back inside, preparing themselves for another long sleepless night of dead-end leads. But Stiles’s answer to his question continued to waft up in his thoughts, clouding his mind, making each word that he read, each statement that he took, blurred and hazy.

_“My dream? I’m in the woods, I don’t know where. But I’m in the woods, with someone. It’s dark, but I’m safe. Sometimes it’s a full moon. But it’s always in the woods.”_

 

                                                                                                                                         

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah. Clearly Derek has moved on from the Discovery Channel. (Little does he know that's like, Stiles's favourite channel ever.)
> 
> Stiles's tattoos are of course inspired by Creature13's BOSS drawing of Stiles, check it out:
> 
> http://creaturexlll.tumblr.com/image/45140180292
> 
> Title is from the poem 'You, Darkness' by Rainer Maria Rilke.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, I always underestimate how long it will take me to finish a chapter. Any triggers, warnings or any other cray serious stuff is in the end notes. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, forgive and point out mistakes.

 

Rubbing his eye with the heel of his hand, Derek tried to make sense of the blurred red digits on the dashboard. Quarter to two. Jesus Christ. These lights had to change at some point. Anyway, it wasn’t like there was anyone around to cross the road. This place was dead from the ground up. The only living things around him were starved alley cats and shadows that shifted under pieces of damp cardboard.  Pieces of cardboard that were about to get a whole lot more damp, as it had just began to rain. Fantastic. At least the lights had changed. Thank fuck for that.

This was his life now. He becomes inordinately grateful for traffic lights changing. One small mercy in an otherwise predictable day. Get up. Feed the dogs. Breakfast. Sit ups. Push ups. Go to work. Work. Work. Work. Bed. Repeat. For fuck’s sake, he used to _like stuff._ He used to read books and play baseball and sometimes even go on dates. To the movies. In which _other_ people jumped over barbed wire fences and interrogated suspects. Somehow it looked a lot less exhausting when Jeremy Renner did it.

But now it was just him and Reyes and the middle of the night, always the middle of the night. He couldn’t remember what eleven AM looked like, and as for a lazy Sunday morning, he might as well –

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”

Derek slammed down on the brakes, feeling his heart leave his chest as his ass momentarily left his seat. Taking a moment to breathe, he fumbled the ignition, turning the engine off. At least he didn’t hit it. Him. Was it a him? Derek peered past the swaying windshield wipers, squinting at the shimmering figure through what was now torrents of rain.

Was that -?

No.

Fuck, it was.

Stiles.

Frozen like a baby deer in the headlights, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. How Derek could have thought it was anyone else _but_ Stiles, he didn’t know. His tattoos were stark on his bloodless skin, lit up in the glare of the headlights. Noticing the kid was leaning slightly on the hood of the car, for one panicked moment Derek wondered if he actually did hit him. But even as he reached to undo his seatbelt, the more rational, cop-side of his brain was telling him that Stiles was holding his left side. It was unlikely his car could have wrapped itself all the way around his waist.

Derek then decides to thank the rational side of his brain by defying every argument it has put forward, and gets out of the car.

“Stiles?”

Stiles seemed to have just come to terms with the fact that he was in the middle of the road leaning against a car. Wheezing, he managed to straighten himself up before grimacing.

“Oh fuck me. Captain fucking America. What do you want?”

Derek couldn’t help but feel mildly irritated at that. Not only was he standing in what was slowly becoming a deluge of rain for this ratty little bastard, but he also bore no resemblance to Captain America. For some reason he felt it was his civic duty to inform Stiles of this. He snorted and stretched out, rubbing absently at his side. Derek hurried on.

“Are you okay? You look like shit.”

“And feel like shit, thanks to you and Blondie.”

Sighing at Derek’s bewildered expression; he leant against the car. “Few of the guys saw me getting your freakin’ guard of honour out of the station, y’know, last week. I guess they had an hour to kill and decided to kick the everloving shit out of the rat.”

Derek felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. He should have known. Reyes should have known. It didn’t matter that Stiles hadn’t told them anything, it had been enough to be seen with them.  And now the poor kid had been used as a punching bag for some of the city’s more unsavoury characters. Wonderful. 

“Get in the car.”

In the back of his mind, Derek vaguely reminisced of a time in which he had better social skills. As he attempted to formulate a way in which to soften his request, Stiles had somehow managed to put his hands on his hips and was rolling his eyes.

“You’ve got to be kidding. If you actually think going _back_ to the station is going to make things better –“

“No, uh, not to the station.” Seriously, Derek Hale of the White Collar Division would have been bent double laughing at this stage. What was it about this kid that made him feel so wildly inept? Derek wiped his sodden hair out of his eyes.

Stiles raised his eyebrows before snapping into business mode. “Seriously? Ugh, okay then, forty-five for the whole thing. Kissing, but no hickies. Also, no kinky shit, tie me up and I bite your dick off.”

Derek closed his eyes momentarily and let out a little breath. This kid was smart. He should be at college. He should be in some dorm playing video games or at a party that didn’t involve crack. Instead, he was standing in the pissing rain, bruised up and so sick for his drugs that he was propositioning a cop.

“Stiles, I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“S’cool man, head is twenty, I’ll give you a handjob for –“

“No, listen, _Stiles._ Listen to me.” Derek suddenly felt like he was talking to a child. And wow, that was a disturbing thought. “You’re right, I should have known better than to see you off from the station so publicly. The least I can do is to offer you a place to stay for a couple of nights, just until you feel better. Nothing else, no other, um, services necessary.”

And now he was being subjected to that Stiles-stare again, fantastic. Throughout the past week, this scrutiny that was so intense that it made the rain around them seem to vibrate had re-entered his mind, again and again. All at once Derek wanted to run away, to get back in the car and just reverse, reverse, reverse until he was on the other side of the city. He didn’t even care about taking the long route home, he could just walk away now, he could just –

“To stay with you? In your h-home?” Stiles’s voice faltered on the last word, as if he had never used it, as if it was an unfamiliar taste rolling around in his mouth. Home was not in Stiles’s vocabulary; home was somewhere that Stiles had never had. All he had was pavement and a thousand damp unfamiliar apartments. Derek didn’t let his heart hurt for just anyone, but damn, some people were dealt the worst hand. He swallowed back his wild plans for escape.

“Yeah, I’ve got loads of room. And central heating, which I’m pretty sure any other place you decide to go to will not have.”

After a heartbeat, Stiles narrowed his eyes and smirked. “Yeah, fair point. Twenty bucks and you have a deal, my friend. Consider yourself the least-hated cop in the city.”

Derek sighed and slapped the money into his hand. He always had a soft spot for the ones that drove a hard bargain. You had to at least admire the survival skills. “Well come on then, get in the car. This rain is getting ridiculous.”

X X X

Stiles had played with the dashboard the whole ride home, twiddling the dials and running his hands over the soft leather. Derek had let him; he figured he needed something to concentrate on. He had tried to focus on the road, but couldn’t help glancing at the bloodied knuckles that slid in and out of the streetlights. The kid had fought back.

As Derek pulled up to his apartment, he tried to set aside the twisted bunch of nerves that had settled in his stomach when Stiles had asked him to pull over for a second and hurried into a narrow alleyway. He had returned with one of his jeans pockets bulging, offering Derek an apologetic smile. Derek had only stared straight ahead and dug his fingernails into the steering wheel. He knew enough about rapid detoxification to know that Stiles needed to regulate his drug use so his heart didn’t give out. And if that made Detective Derek Hale of the Narcotics Division an accessory to a crime, so be it.

God fucking dammit, he was so screwed.

 _One thing at a time Hale, one thing at a time._ He twisted the keys into the door, and opened it slowly. Instinctively, he turned to Stiles and said “Oh, by the way, I have dogs.”

“How many?”

That was all Stiles could get out before he was practically bowled over by a pack of joyful yaps and scrabbly paws.

“Shit, sorry, seven. I have seven dogs. I probably should have let you know before I –“

Stiles batted away his offer to extricate him from the puppy pile and instead ran his inked hands across Chamberlain’s droopy snout.

“I love dogs, dude, it’s cool. I used to share my McDonalds with a three-legged pitbull called Chidgey that belongs to that dude on Westmore Street that screams about the Virgin Mary. What’s this guy’s name?”

Attempting to set aside this strangely adorable image, Derek cleared his throat. “That’s, er, Chamberlain, because he always looks hopeful. The bulldog over there is called Churchill, because, y’know, he’s a bulldog.”

The names of the British wartime prime ministers seemed lost on Stiles, so Derek hurried on. “And er, the big one is Georgie, then Trigger, Cass, the little one trying to wriggle under your arm is Millie and this one is Scott.”

Stiles took one look at Scott’s big mournful eyes and burst into a peel of laughter. “Oh man, that dog is the fucking picture of my buddy Scott. He’s even got the crooked jaw. That is just too great.”

Grinning at Stiles’s amusement, Derek whistled the dogs into the living room, before turning back to Stiles. “You can borrow my clothes if you want a shower. Are you okay? You don’t think your ribs are broken or anything?”

Stiles shook his head. “Trust me man, I would know if they were broken. They’re just bruised.” Derek swallowed his retort and nodded. “Just run cold water over it and that eye and I think it should be fine.” He pointed to the bathroom door. “It’s just in there, the shower knob is kind of tricky, you have to like, twist up and –“

“Don’t worry man, I’ve figured out enough showers to know every trick.”

Derek nodded, watching Stiles’s retreating narrow back. It was strange, seeing his violently stark tattoos against the walls of his home. It wasn’t an invasion exactly, just like he had put up a big projector in his living room and was watching the Stiles’s wolf tattoos slide against the cream walls. He suddenly felt surrounded by wolves, surrounded by Stiles.

As he fed the dogs, he mentally prepared himself for every situation that might arise. Stiles might try to steal his stuff. No, scratch that, Derek has seen his rap sheet, Stiles will _definitely_ try to steal his stuff. He might hit Derek over the head with a lamp. A lot less likely, but it doesn’t stop Derek from sliding his heaviest lamp into one of the kitchen cupboards.

“What the fuck am I doing?”

Churchill seemed to shrug moodily at him. _You’re on your own on this one man, you make your bed you lie in it._ Derek flipped him off and pulled Millie into his lap. She looked at him with her big, orb-like eyes. _You are so freaking screwed._

After awhile, Derek heard the door of the bathroom turn, and set Millie down, thus extracting himself from what had been ramping up to fierce mental argument with his pet fox terrier. Although he was practically swimming in Derek’s clothes, Stiles looked a lot better. Considering the amount of time he had spent in there, Derek was prepared to bet that he would find a suspicious amount of tin foil in the bathroom wastepaper basket. Great, just great. A junkie had just shot up in his bathroom, probably sitting on the lid of his catalogue-ordered IKEA toilet seat. He needed a drink.

“Want a beer? I was just about to make us something to eat.”

Now with a much easier step, Stiles practically glided toward him, accepting the bottle graciously. Ignoring Derek’s offering of a bottle opener, he bit off the cap with a click that would have made dentists everywhere cry. Taking a long swig, he hopped up on the kitchen counter top and crossed his legs, absently patting Georgie’s silky muzzle.

“What’s on the menu then?”

“The fridge says stir fry, so stir fry.”

Stiles clearly had no idea what stir fry was, but he nodded distractedly, staring around at Derek’s designer warehouse-chic apartment. Derek had been reassured by his sister that the exposed brick look was very in at the moment. He just bought it for the huge window that practically took up the wall furthest from them. Its magnitude meant that he could look past the city, past the chimney tops and the nightmarish billboards, straight up into the sky above.

“You play?”

Starting slightly, Derek turned back to where Stiles was pointing. His second favourite baseball bat lay against the bookcase, looking depressingly dusty.

“Yeah, well, I used to. It’s my sport. You ever play?”

Stiles hummed slightly. “Well, I used to have a baseball bat.”

Deciding it was better not to ask, Derek turned back to prodding their sizzling dinner. Stiles, meanwhile, had wandered over to the bookcase, poking at some of the spines, sliding some of them out halfway, before sliding them back in, as if he was afraid he would damage them if he took them out.

“Wow, these are some big words right here. _The God Delusion?_ Jesus. That’s a bit fuckin’ pretentious.”

Derek laughed at that. Stiles couldn’t be more right. “I’m not gonna lie, I’ve only read about half of those books. My brother keeps leaving the big ones behind every time he comes to stay.” He cleared his throat noisily, not wanting to stray onto the topic of families. “If you find that so pretentious, what do you read?”

Stiles flashed him a smirk. “Bathroom walls mostly.” Grinning at Derek’s incredulous bark of laughter, he took another swig of beer. “Seriously! I had a buddy called Boyd who used to insist that all of the world’s deepest shit, like, its biggest wisdom, is like, written on the walls of public toilets. Like, there’s this stall in the toilets in Connell station. Real hellhole of a place. But right on the door of one of the cubicles, someone’s just written ‘ _What are you doing?’_ That’s it. I don’t know why, but it’s super important.”

Derek didn’t know why he couldn’t answer; it was like something had lodged in his throat. All he could do was turn around and, with hands that shook slightly, began to serve dinner.

X X X

 

“I fucking _love_ that film dude.”

From the couch on which they were sitting, Derek looked up to where Stiles was pointing, at his framed _Taxi Driver_ poster. Stiles continued “A guy I knew called Big Ricci used to have it on VHS, we watched it like twenty times. I don’t know what the fuck was up with the ending but it was classy as hell.”

He stretched out his hands excitedly, framing the poster with his thumbs and forefingers. He was, at this point, pretty drunk. Not only did the kid weigh less than half of Derek, but he also seemed to be attempting to drink away both his discomfort and confusion. Since dinner, he had made four passes at Derek, at one point making an exasperated grab at his crotch. It didn’t take much to push him away. All Derek had to do was remember the sick, sad Stiles that he had nearly ran into the pavement, and the cold desperation for twenty bucks that had led him here. He felt though, he had finally gotten across the message that whatever this was, it wasn’t a job.

Stiles sighed dreamily and sunk a bit lower into the cushions, nursing the bottle against his cheek. “Yeah man, what a film...That Iris chick reminded me of my Lydia. Y’know, classy girl and everything, but hard as fuckin’ nails.”

“Your Lydia? How long you two been together?” Derek ignored the weird dropping sensation in his stomach. It wasn’t unusual for rent boys to be gay for pay.

“Hell no, vaginas freak me out man, it’s just dudes for me. I loved Lydia and everything, but not in that way.”

“Loved?”

“Yeah, she OD’d last Christmas. Or at least I think it was Christmas. They were playing carols in the church. I went there to warm up. Then I went back to the place we were staying in and I found her.”

Tracing his thumb around the rim of the bottle, Stiles lifted his eyes to meet Derek’s, and he was suddenly lost for air. A ferocious despair clung to Stiles’s irises, and it was more than the drink, more than the drugs. His voice grew even hoarser as he dropped to as whisper.

“It was horrible. She was like, half there. Because she was so little and skinny, it was like the only thing that made her look okay was the way she held herself. Always real straight and proper. But when she was dead...It just looked like this yellow waxy doll in a bundle of blankets with arms and legs that wouldn’t move. I wouldn’t have known it was Lydia if it wasn’t for her hair. She had like, curly strawberry blonde hair that she always kept so good. That was all that was left of her.”

The silence in the room was deafening. Some of the dogs had fallen asleep at their feet. Millie was trying to lick away the distant expression on Stiles’s face. He gently pushed her down and set the bottle on the coffee table, resting his face in his tattooed hands, speaking into them.

“We had always made plans to get clean together. We were going to, y’know, support each other. We were going to put all the money together and try and get a place to live. But once she died, Leon made me give him all of mine and her money, to pay for “damages”. It didn’t really matter anymore. I wasn’t going to get clean without her. So I gave up trying.”

“No.”

“Huh?”

Derek had leapt to his feet and began to pace, stepping over the sleeping dogs. It was like someone had run into every little room in his brain and begun snapping on lights. He felt wildly inspired for the first time in months. Fuck Greenberg and his politically incorrect jokes, this was his chance to actually _help_ someone. And what better someone than Stiles, a person whose very presence made him feel like someone had attached a jump wire to his spinal cord?

“Listen, you told me that the only time you ever felt safe was in the woods in your dream right? Well I’ve _seen_ those woods. They’re as dark and as thick and as safe as you described. And I think that you have every chance and every right to see those woods, if only you let me help you.”

“Oh yeah? What’s in it for you?” Derek had to admire Stiles’s snarky cynicism. Not many people would be able to pull off that eyebrow raise eight bottles in.

“Nothing, no sex, no money. Just a little bit of goddamn purpose in my life.”

Derek was sure his voice betrayed a little more than he had wished to tell, because Stiles’s big brown eyes softened.

“I- I’ve tried before. It hasn’t worked. Like, I came out of the freakin’ womb on smack, I don’t know how I’m going to-“

He looked so unsure of himself that Derek reached out a hand to lay it on his shoulder. Instinctively, Stiles jerked back. Closing his eyes for a second, Derek decided to follow through, stretching out to place his palm on the back of Stiles’s neck.

“I don’t have to tell you that it’s going to be hard. I need to think about how we’re going to approach this, but I think...I think you’ll do good.”

The small, pinched smile that crept across Stiles’s lips was just about the closest thing to relief that Derek had seen in the past couple of months.

“Okay.”

They didn’t shake hands, they didn’t hug. Derek didn’t know if he had just made a pact with the devil or had bargained with some very lost tattooed angel. Either way, as he lay on the couch, listening to Stiles’s uneven breaths in his bedroom and watching the early morning sun slide across the big window, he was pretty sure that, magnificent epiphanies aside, he was royally fucked.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So obviously Stiles has had a rough time in this story so far, and believe me, it's not going to get any better. To do such a serious topic like drug addiction justice, I try to do as much research as I can, but if you guys find anything unrealistic or incorrect, please let me know, the last thing I'd want to do is to treat a subject like this lightly.
> 
> In other news, Chamberlain and Churchill's names are taken from my history-snob of a cousin. If Stiles had a dog, he'd probably call it Gumdrop.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I assumed would fit just fine into one chapter is now being spread over two. Typical. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, forgive and point out mistakes.

 

 

By the time Stiles stumbled into the kitchen, it was early afternoon and Derek was knee-deep in research. Calling in sick to work had been met with a frank frostiness by Reyes, who informed him that she was going to upload a “monumental amount of gay porn” onto his computer and see how long it would take I.T. to report it to the Chief. Derek could only laugh and secretly pray she was joking.

On seeing Stiles make his sluggish pilgrimage toward the kitchen table, Derek quickly closed down the twenty or so tabs with titles like “Heroin withdrawal: Symptoms and prevention” or “Methadone Clinics in your area”.

“Sorry about last night man, I was all over the place.”

“No problem, we both had a lot to drink.” He decided it was best not mention that he had barely gotten through three bottles. It was a bit early in the day to be subjected to the Stiles-glare. “There’s cereal in the cupboard if you’re hungry.”

Stiles nodded, making his way to the cupboard. Of course, he managed to drag out Derek’s only box of Lucky Charms amidst all the Bran Flakes. Clearly deciding to forgo any kind of eating utensils, he hopped up onto the kitchen counter and began to eat the brightly coloured crap straight from the box.

Silence filled the kitchen, permeated only by the rustle of Stiles’s progress with the Lucky Charms and the slow pitter-patter of Georgie heaving her ancient self in between his knees.

“Listen, you can forget about all that shit I was spewing last night dude. Your _Pretty Woman_ offer is super generous and everything, but I think I’m good.”

Derek sighed and pretended to check his emails. He had prepared himself for this eventuality. He allowed the silence to hang, continuing to tap out meaningless letters and digits. He could feel Stiles’s honey-eyes boring into him, willing him to throw back some words to chew on. After a heartbeat of mental preparation, Derek forced himself to look up at him and was surprised with what he saw. Stiles was biting his nails. All at once, Derek was struck by how _young_ Stiles looked, sitting cross-legged on his kitchen counter, eating Lucky Charms and gnawing at his fingers. Even his tattoos made him look young, like someone had taken a Magic Marker and scrawled across his arms.

“Don’t look at me like that dude, I’m serious. I don’t need any of your charity shit. I’m handling my stuff just fine. Besides, the guys that are going to be looking for me? Not nice. Not nice like heated-up wire hanger not nice. I don’t need that kind of hassle, and neither do you.”

Derek chewed the inside of his cheek. Stiles was right, of course. His pimp and his assorted lackeys would be on the warpath if they realised that someone had made off with his properties. A heated-up wire hanger was a very real threat. But if they did this right, Stiles wouldn’t need to ever see them again...

If they did this right maybe Stiles wouldn’t look so thin.

Steeling himself, Derek tried to smile at Stiles. That alone should throw the kid off guard. Then he got up and moved to the coffee maker, turning his back on Stiles.

“Fine by me, I knew you wouldn’t able to do it, anyway.”

Facing Stiles, he was pleased to see that the poor bastard was wearing what only could be called a petrified-goldfish expression. His mouth open and closed, each time falling a little bit further towards an outright gape.

“D-dude, are you calling me a pussy? Are you fucking _serious_ right now?”

Derek crossed his arms, hoping that he was pulling off the self-satisfied smirk correctly. He hadn’t used it in years, not since the days of fistfights and games of tag. It seemed to be having the desired effect however, as Stiles had slammed down the Lucky Charms so hard that some of the marshmallows sprung out onto the floor. Scott got there before poor old Georgie, gobbling up every last one. Derek couldn’t help but notice that Stiles had bitten his nails down to the quick again, and one of them was bleeding.

“Well, you don’t seem to be even willing to _try_ to –“

“Have you ever _tried_ a smack detox, man? Fucking hell, it’s like your bones are firecrackers and someone has lit each of your nerve endings alight. There is nothing worse dude, _nothing_.”

“I dare you.”

From the moment he had walked into that interrogation room, Derek was sure of one thing: Stiles didn’t back down from dares. His whole body language screamed I-will-jump-off-the-roof-if-you-give-me-that-Twinkie. His brother Mark was exactly the same, Derek’s favourite thing as a kid was to see how far Mark would go. After swallowing and throwing back up two goldfish and breaking his ankle rolling off the ravine in a garbage can, turns out Mark would go pretty far.

True enough, at the mention of a dare, Stiles’s body language changed entirely. His eyes lit up and if he had had nails they would have clicked against the kitchen counter as he tapped them. A mischievous smile had spread across his face, his lips pressed tightly together, lifting his entire face.

“How much you wanna bet?”

“Three-fifty.”

“Fuck that shit, I’d make that in tricks in a couple of days. Seven hundred.”

“Four-fifty.”

“Six hundred.”

“Five-fifty.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes. “Deal.”

“Fine, five hundred and fifty bucks if you can kick the habit.” Jesus, this kid drove a hard bargain. They shook hands, and when Stiles let go, Derek could see a tiny smear of blood from his nail on the palm of his own hand. Convulsively, he made a fist, clutching to the stain.

“So remind me again, what do you get out of this?” Stiles asked as he buried his nose into Cass’s soft fur.

Derek plastered a grin on his face and managed to smile down at him. “Nothing, just want to see you sweat.”

On reflection, he regretted that choice of words.

X X X

“This one! I want this one.”

Stiles did a spectacular slam-dunk motion as he threw the box of whatever new sugary crap he had grabbed from the shelves into the cart. Derek hummed in assent, checking the list of essentials the doctor had given them, as they wheeled down the sterilised linoleum of the supermarket. Stiles’s chatter blocked out the sickeningly soothing muzak, his skinny fingers dragging the cart behind him. All Derek could do was cling on for dear life and grab a tin of soup whenever it was deemed appropriate.

A thousand different brightly coloured brands sailed past them, and Derek kept throwing furtive looks around, in case one of his colleagues was to come around the corner. Derek didn’t really have a cover story for why he was taking a well-known prostitute grocery shopping, or why they were stockpiling enough food for a nuclear holocaust. 

The doctor at the methadone clinic had warned them that they would not be getting out too much in the next few days, so it was better to buy as much food as humanely possible. Derek made a mental note to call in his favour to Rodriguez; the fucker owed him at least three days.

The nurse had taken Stiles into the next room to begin a series of tests for various STIs (Stiles had sworn he was clean, but minutes before Derek had to return a wallet Stiles had lifted off a guy in the street, so he wasn’t in the most trusting of moods). The doctor had taken Derek aside and advised him that with an addict of this severity, it would probably be best for Stiles to be hospitalised. Stiles had put an end to this debate by coming crashing out of the office, dodging three nurses and attempting to bite an orderly. It was only when he hit the solid wall of an unimpressed Derek that he acquiesced, and was led back into the office.

So now he was making his way down an aisle, his pockets stuffed with lists, tips, and timelines. He felt like he was preparing for war, as under box of obnoxiously decorated cereal, there was a stash of methadone that could kill a horse. Covert operation in aisle three.  And judging by the looks that other shoppers were giving them, the operation was not so covert. He should have given Stiles a hoodie or something. Actually, that would have probably made him look more menacing.

Suddenly, Stiles interrupted his chatter about cornflakes to make a bolt for the checkout. For one, heart stopping second, Derek thought he was going to make a break for it. The checkout girl thought otherwise, and ducked under her till, letting out a small scream. Instead of running headlong into the checkout, Stiles skidded to a halt just at the candy counter, picking up a luminous yellow packet of sherbet. He beamed at Derek, stuffing the packet into his hand, before turning back to the cowering checkout girl, who was still holding her hands over her head.

“Do you have any strawberry lollipops please?”

X X X

“Whatever you’re doing to that lollipop, stop it right now.”

Stiles smirked at him over heavily lidded eyes, his feet up on the dash. “Instinct baby, it’s all instinct.”

Derek rolled his eyes, taking one of his hands off the wheel so he could lightly push Stiles’s legs down. Both of them seemed quite happy not to say anything about the unmistakable slight tremor that was now running up and down Stiles’s hands as he dipped the lollipop back into the bag of sherbet.

Stiles had taken the stairs two at a time before collapsing on the sofa in front of the TV. Tucking his knees up to his chest, he made Derek call out DVD titles before settling on _Sunshine_ , because “Killian Murphy is a stone-cold babe, dude.”

Derek put on the movie and then began to make his way through the house, preparing for, as the doctor said, “any and all eventualities.” The triple bolt on the front door was finally made use of, and each human-sized window was firmly inspected. Even some not-so-human-sized windows were closed tight. Derek wasn’t sure what that skinny body could wriggle through.

He dragged out buckets, put away the food, and lastly, locked each gun, knife and possible weapon in the safe. His baseball bats wouldn’t fit, so he settled for hiding them in the depths of his closet.

He was padding throughout the apartment, rechecking the bolts, scanning the room for any more potential weapons, when Stiles hoisted himself up from the little nest he had made for himself on the couch.

“Dude, I’m not going to be able to like, leak through the floorboards into the atmosphere. You’re giving me a headache, just come watch the fuckin’ movie.”

Derek nodded apologetically, shooing Trigger and lowering himself down onto the opposite side of the couch. He watched as the bright orange sun on the screen was reflected in Stiles’s eyes. Curled up like a small child, he watched the film, his mouth half open in awe.

X X X

By the time the second movie had ended (Derek had been dimly aware it had Liam Neeson in it), Stiles was shivering violently. Somehow, in the course of four hours, his head had migrated closer and closer to Derek’s leg. When he put his hand down to feel the kid’s forehead, his fingers came away clammy.

Derek willed himself not to panic. The doctor had told him that it was normal to develop a fever around the sixth hour. It was okay, he was okay, and the kid was okay. He inspected the thermometer he had just shoved into Stiles’s protesting mouth. His temperature was elevated, but not dangerously.

The main problem was becoming clearer and clearer as he went about ushering Stiles into the bedroom. He was growing irritable.

“ _Dude_ , this sucks so bad. This is like, worse than when Scott and I huffed all that paint the builders left behind at the Grand Motel. This fucking _sucks_.”

Derek clicked his tongue in sympathy, not wanting to remind Stiles that it was about to get a whole lot worse. When he had situated Stiles on the bed, he cast his eye around the room for something to distract the kid. His gaze caught a crossword puzzle book he had bought in a fit of mental improvement. Knowing that something like that could either result in apathy or pure fury, Derek tossed the book onto the bed and headed back to the living room. He was sure he could dig out a few of the lighter books for the kid to read.

But by the time Derek returned to the bedroom, Stiles was sitting up, scribbling intently in the crossword book. Surprised, Derek bent down to see his progress. Stiles hadn’t filled in a single word, but had flicked to the back of the book. An elegant sketch of a wolf spread across the two blank pages. Stiles hadn’t finished the body of the wolf, it was clear that he had spent most of his energy on its eyes, which were sunken and tired. As Derek leant back slightly, he could almost feel the wolf watching him warily.

“This is great.”

Stiles said nothing to Derek’s soft remark. He simply continued to fill in the glossy fur of the animal, bracing his forehead in his hand while he sketched. Derek eased himself off the bed and made his way back out into the living room. He was sure Cora would have left a few sketchpads behind the last time she stayed with him. She also treated his apartment like some kind of storage container for when she was at art school. On her last visit, she managed to leave behind her speakers and half a bottle of vodka (very helpful to Derek), but she had also left a red lace bra (not so helpful to Derek when it had been found by the last guy he had brought back to the apartment).

Managing to locate a sketchpad in one of the cabinets, he presented Stiles with it. He took it, flipping through the clean thick pages with a kind of hazy appreciation. Before long, they were both propped against the headboard and talking, as Stiles abandoned his wolf sketch and began to draw Derek. He was surprised to find that they were having what could be called a civil conversation, hell, even an enjoyable conversation. Severe trembling aside, Stiles was good company, eager to hear more about Beacon Hills and its inhabitants.

After listening to stories about the sheriff that had inspired Derek to become a cop, a comfortable silence lapsed between them. One by one, the dogs had migrated into the bedroom and were now sprawled around and on them.

Stiles swallowed and brushed his shaking fingers through Churchill’s short hair, continuing to sketch Derek with the other hand. His eyes twitched nervously at Derek’s alarm clock. “Man, Leon is going to be so fucking pissed that I haven’t turned up yet.”

“Leon is your, er, boyfriend?” Early on, Reyes had warned him that ‘pimp’ wasn’t a word generally used by prostitutes. They referred to their pimps as their boyfriends. According to Reyes “it gives a sense of casual ownership while avoiding sounding like an Eazy-E song.”

“Uh huh, like, he’s not the greatest in the world, but he’s not the worst I’ve ever had.”

“Jesus, you’ve had more than one? Just how old _are_ you?”

Stiles looked up from his sketch, smirking. Even from his angle from the drawing, Derek could see his own eyes glinting back at him. It was unnerving. “I’m nineteen. Or, kinda nineteen. My mom couldn’t remember my birthday so I just put it on the first of January so I can pretend that all the fireworks and countdown shit is all for me. I tell ya, it’s fucking fantastic when even people in Japan are celebrating your birthday.”

Misunderstanding the look on Derek’s face, he nodded knowingly. “Yeah, I know, I look a bit younger. A lot of johns like that though.” His grin slid slightly to the side, as if someone had cast a shadow against his cheekbones, making him appear sinister in a strangely vulnerable way.

Attempting to sidestep what he suspected to be a landmine of past trauma, Derek tried to change the subject as elegantly as possible. “But I’m guessing a lot of johns aren’t fans of the tattoos though.”

Stiles inspected his arms before returning to sketching. “You’d be surprised dude, a lot of guys like tattoos. You got any?”

“Yeah, one. On my back.”

“Well come one big boy, don’t be shy, whip it out.”

Pleased to find that he was becoming more impervious to the kid’s offsets and disconcerting tangents, Derek rolled his eyes and reached back to lift up the hem of his shirt, ignoring Stiles’s crow of triumph. He jumped slightly as the tip of Stiles’s sweat-soaked finger gently traced the outline of his tattoo.

“What is it?”

“Triskelion. It’s kind of important to my family.”

“It’s...It’s nice.” Stiles said distantly.

Feeling that he had appeased the whims of Stiles sufficiently, Derek pulled his t-shirt back down, still feeling the ghost of Stiles’s fingertips against his inked skin.

When he turned around, it was clear that in the time it had taken him to adjust himself, he had lost Stiles. The kid was sitting cross-legged, the sketchpad held loosely in one twitching hand while the other one was being given a tongue-bath by Chamberlain. His eyes were clouded, mouth slightly open. Either the lamp in the corner was literally the most wondrous object he had ever come across, or Derek had lost him to la-la-land. Fantastic.

It had taken three gentle shakes to bring the kid back to reality, and he didn’t look too pleased to be there. “Oh, sorry. Must have drifted off or something. What were we talking about?”

“Tattoos.”

“Ah.” With a surge of what Derek thought was frankly heroic energy, Stiles launched into the psychology behind getting a tattoo. Stuff about empty spaces and societies need to fill them. Derek wasn’t really listening; he was engrossed by the contrast of the thin delicate strokes of the sketch versus the sweat sheen that was clearly visible on Stiles’s forehead, even from this light.

“- Scott and I just use me for like, practice and shit. It’s handier.”

Derek nodded, like he’d taken in everything Stiles had said. “Is Scott with Leon as well?”

“Oh hell no, Scott doesn’t hook. He’s got a special lady friend called Allison. He wants the whole nine yards with her, you know, kids, white picket fence. It’s sick, dude.”

“So you don’t see him as much these days?”

“Nah, not really. Allison’s gotten him into a programme, so I’ve been spending much more time, you know, on my own.”

Derek didn’t say anything more until finally, Stiles laid the pencil down. “Dude, my hands are shaking too much for this shit. I can’t stop fucking yawning.”

Derek nodded understandingly, clearing away the drawing things. “Yeah, the doc said that’d be a side effect. See if you can get some sleep.” With Stiles’s assent, he shut off the lights and closed the door behind him, before looking down at the sketch.

Stiles had drawn him looking happier, younger than he felt. He didn’t have bags under his eyes and the scruffy beard was closer to designer stubble. Stiles had managed to work a small, wry smile onto his face, one he could often remember feeling but never remember making. With his thumb, he traced the edge of his clear eyes, so reminiscent of those in photos of him at the academy. Although he didn’t feel like this man was dead, Derek had never felt so separate from anyone in all his life. He stared down at the sketch in his hands.

_You and me tonight buddy. Let’s hope at least one of us comes through this alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first half of essentially what is the withdrawal episode of the story, the second half is obviously going to be on the more extreme aspect of the detoxification. While I've read up quite a bit on this, don't hesitate to call me out on issues you have with representation and timelines. 
> 
> Fun fact: I named Derek's brother Mark in honour of my best friend whose actions served as inspiration for Derek's brother's shenanigans. 
> 
> Comments, bookmarks, kudos, WHATEVER are the pure love of my being, and you, YES YOU AT THE SCREEN, are beautiful and excellent.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note of warning: This chapter contains what I envision to be a pretty step by step graphic description of heroin withdrawal, which as you might guess, is a fairly unpleasant topic. Just be warned, much sweating and shivering dwelleth here. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, forgive and point out mistakes.

 

It hadn’t taken long for Stiles to wake up.

“Dude, dude, Derek, _Derek_ , I’m freaking out man, I’m fucking freaking _out._ ”

Clammy hands wrenched Derek from the haze of sleep that he had been fighting off for the past hour. Squinting at Stiles in the dim lamplight, he could see that they had landed in what the doctor had called “the craving stage”. Stiles was practically hanging off him, having clearly stumbled from the bedroom. His face was close so Derek’s he could feel panicked, quick breathes against his cheek.

“Derek, Derek, listen, I need to go outside, I’m fucking _suffocating_ in here man, I need to breathe, I can’t fucking breathe, let me go outside and I swear I’ll come back in like, five minutes, _please_ –“

Derek attempted to untwist the skinny inked fingers that were now knotted up in his t-shirt. Sweat was shining on Stiles’s forehead and he was bending over slightly, as if intense stomach pains were ripping through his body. His eyes darted, wild and unfocused, like a feral cat cornered in an alleyway, constantly looking for an exit point. Derek didn’t need a doctor to tell him what Stiles was craving, and he knew that the only way he could get it was if he left the apartment. “This” the doctor had said “will be up to your strength of will, and whether you can deny his pain.”

Three months in the Narcotics Division wasn’t a long time, but Derek had put in his fair share of work as a beat cop, and he had seen enough people shot in the stomach, clasping their guts which were in danger of pouring out of their bodies. And all Derek could say to Stiles was what he had said to these people.

“It’s going to be okay.”

Stiles, however, was having none of his bullshit.

“Fuck that man; it is so fucking not okay from where I’m standing. Just give me five minutes, five freaking minutes and I’ll be back, I swear it, I swear – “

_Keep it together Hale._

“Stiles, you know I can’t do that –“

“Jesus Christ Derek, it’s too much okay? It hurts too much, just let me go for awhile, _please_ let me go letmegoletmegoletmego _let me go.”_

Suddenly, Stiles dropped to his knees, and for a second Derek was confused to whether the kid was begging or just exhausted. This confusion was pushed aside to make room for sheer distress when Stiles reached to try and undo his belt buckle with his trembling fingers.

“This is what you want right? I’ll do this and then you can let me go outside for awhile, five, ten minutes tops man, I’ll do this and then we’re good and-“

Derek managed to swat the desperate hands away and instead of forcing Stiles to stand any more than he needed to, he crouched down, at eye level, reaching a hand out to feel the kid’s forehead. He brushed away the wet hair that usually stuck up in tufts, sliding his other hand over a quaking shoulder. He wasn’t allowed to administer the methadone within the critical first hours of the detox period. Sometimes he thought God was too fucking cruel.

“I’m sorry Stiles, I just can’t let you go outside, it’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just –“

“N-no, FUCK YOU!” Stiles threw off his touch, attempting to balance himself against the coffee table. “You _don’t_ trust me, and why fucking should you, you’ve only known me two goddamn days! You and your stupid fucking car had to roll right in and interrupt _my_ life. You just thought you could waltz right in and fuck up my life when it was going. Just. _Fine.”_

“Was going fine? Was it really going fine Stiles? ” Derek could feel his temper rise, and he knew that Stiles wasn’t in his right mind, he knew that he wasn’t thinking straight, but it made his blood fucking _boil_  that this little shithead could just come in here, with his big eyes and his inked arms and his loud mouth and just screw everything up. “Because where I’m standing, you’re just a half-dead junkie kid that the world has fucking _forgotten_ about.”

Stiles laughed at that, the ugliest gurgling scream of laugh that seemed to fray everything nerve ending in Derek’s body. “Don’t you _dare_ , don’t you _fucking_ dare pretend that this was about me, this was all about you. You just thought you could give your life some purpose, and I’m just your ticket to goddamn self-fulfilment or whatever.”

Seeing that Derek was going to open his mouth to protest, Stiles pushed him as hard as he could, which, in his current state, felt to Derek as if a light breeze had brushed over him. The twisted look on Stiles’s face was enough of a low punch in the gut though.

“You asshole, you fucking asshole, you think you’re so _fucking_ perfect with your job and your education and your money and all of your fancy fucking trinkets, but I KNOW you’re as goddamn dirt-miserable as me.  You’re all up your own ass about your promotion, but it’s obvious to fucking _anyone_ that you hate your job. You talk about your family that come to stay with you, but I don’t see a single photo of them in this place, so you can’t be all that close to them. You’ve taken in fucking _seven_ stray dogs, dude! You surround yourself with things that need your help so you won’t feel so. Fucking. _Weak.”_

Derek closed his eyes momentarily and just exhaled. He tuned out the harsh ragged breathes coming from Stiles and allowed a fraction of a lump form in his throat before swallowing it again and opening his eyes.

“You need my help.”

“What?”

“You said ‘things that need your help’. You said you need my help.”

Stiles halted, his mouth hanging open, one of his multi-coloured hands pressed to the side of his face, stretching it down slightly.

“I didn’t –“

“Yes you did.”

The tears came with no warning. They sprang into the honey-coloured eyes so suddenly, for a second Derek thought he was hallucinating, that his brain had some kind of unconscious wish for Stiles to react to his situation in the same way most young people his age would: to cry.

They were real tears though, and it was only when one drop ran down his cheek did Derek grip his elbows and slowly lower his shaking body back down to the floor. Stiles wrapped his arms around his knees and buried his face in the quiet dark space between his chest and his legs. Derek noticed his breaths were becoming more ragged now.

“I-I-I can’t do this D-Derek, I’m n-not strong enough, y-you’re right, l-lost the bet. A-and I can’t b-breathe, I can’t _f-fucking breathe._ ”

Stiles had begun to take breaths in and in and in, taking great gulps of air, but never enough to make him exhale. The pamphlet the nurse had given Derek had listed panic attacks as a possible side-effect of the withdrawal. Derek suspected that in Stiles’s case, the possible had turned to extremely probable.

The wheezing, rattling gasps that were emitting from Stiles’s lungs, his hands were now pressed to his ribcage, and Derek could almost see what he was feeling, an entirely different pain that was now obviously blossoming in his body.

Derek wrenched one of the damp hands into his own and pressed it to his own chest. _Man up Detective Hale._ “Stiles.” He said it as calmly and as softly as he could manage; trying to contain what was slowly turning into a distressed bird rattling around in a cage that happened to be its own body. “Stiles, I need you to breathe with me, can you do that? Breathe with me.”

He took in one deep breath and exhaled. And another. And another. And another. At first, it looked like it was having no effect, Stiles was still staring at him with wild bewildered eyes, confused and agitated. But after a minute that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, he began to match Derek’s breaths, and bit by bit, the attack subsided. Soon all that remained was quiet sobs, like a child afraid of the dark. 

Derek pressed his forehead to Stiles’s, gently rubbing slow circles into his spine. “Listen kid, I’m not gonna lie to you. This right here? It’s going to get a whole lot worse. And maybe you’re right; maybe you’re not strong enough. You said so yourself, I’ve only known you for two days. But Stiles, what I _do_ know about you is that you’re brave. You have to be brave, to go through all the shit you’ve gone through. And that’s all I need you to be right now, just be brave. Be brave.”

And they sat like that for another hour, Stiles’s hands like claws fisted in Derek’s shirt, and Derek repeating the same thing over and over again, growing softer each time.

_Be brave. Be brave. Be brave._

 

X X X

 

The vomiting started the next morning.

Derek set a bucket next to the couch on which Stiles was curled up, gently running his hand through the kid’s damp hair. He had given up trying to distract him with another sketchpad, another movie, some extra sherbet he had bought at the supermarket when he saw how much Stiles liked it. All of his offerings had been met with eyes scrunched closed and low groans.

Staunchly refusing to eat anything, he only permitted Derek to tip Gatorade into his mouth every now and then. He cringed back when Derek tried to wipe his running eyes or nose, confused and afraid of someone trying to physically take care of him.

The shivering was now so violent that it shook the whole couch. The dogs, upset by the clear distress and the sick-smell, tried to inch forward, pawing at the boy’s quaking shoulder in an attempt to rouse him. Much of Derek’s day consisted of attempting to remove the dogs from the vicinity, as it was clear that Stiles didn’t need any more heat. At one point however, he returned to find Stiles had clasped onto little Millie, and had buried his running nose into her soft fur.

Suddenly, he shoved her aside and grabbed the bucket, throwing his face into it, hacking and spitting. After the first few times, he had nothing more to throw up, so by now it was just ripping and shredding, agony upon agony. Derek sat heavily down in the gap made by the curve of Stiles’s body and held the bucket, giving soft comforting squeezes to the back of his neck, whispering pure nonsense to him.

After the retching had subsided, Derek gave him his methadone and forced him to drink a large glass of water, which was done with much incomprehensible bitching. When it was clear that the methadone had taken effect, he managed to scoop Stiles up and carry him into the bathroom.

Derek turned the taps of the bath he had only used once or twice in his life, managing to balance Stiles against the rim of the tub with one arm. Deciding that all modesty and decency had left this relationship long ago (and let’s face it, was never really there in the first place), he stripped Stiles of his clothes and lowered him into the lukewarm water, which, according to the doctor, would prevent him from passing out.

Attempting to ignore the screech of confusion, he turned off the taps and tried to settle Stiles in a way that wouldn’t involve the kid sliding under the water and drowning himself. When he informed Stiles of what he was trying to do, to his intense surprise the kid actually gave a kind of breathy almost-laugh.

“A-a dead hooker in your b-bath won't get you no promotion.”

Smiling at the ugly quip, Derek heartily agreed. Sitting on the rim of the bath, he poured water onto Stiles’s sweat-starched hair and with a facecloth attempted to clean away the snot, tears and other crud that caked Stiles’s face. For a second, he was cast back to his mother bathing him as a young boy, and her firm face-cleaning that would always leave him spluttering. She would punctuate this rigorous wash with a gentle tap on the nose with the facecloth. It would always make him laugh. When he did it to Stiles, he was glad to see a wavering smile crease the corners of his mouth.

Although it was clear that Stiles wouldn’t have noticed if a nail-bomb had exploded in the bathroom, Derek was quick to avert his eyes when he helped Stiles out of the bath and into a pair of clothes. As curious as he was to see where the tattoos began and ended, a helpful voice in the back of his head reminded him that he had literally just wiped snot from this kid’s face. These were the only things he could focus on at the moment.

When he touched Stiles’s shoulder he was relieved to find that his skin was no longer fire to the touch, that the bath had had the desired effect. With much difficulty, he got Stiles into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, both of which dwarfed him. Derek settled him on the bed and went to wash out the bucket. When he returned, bucket in hand, Stiles was curled up in the centre of the bed. He looked so mind-bogglingly tiny in this light, and all at once Derek felt overwhelmed with the responsibility he felt for this person, this person that was _counting_ on him to be strong. For a second, as he stood at the bedroom door, listening to Stiles’s wheezing breaths; it all seemed a bit too much. _Get a grip Hale. You told Stiles to be brave. Take your own fucking advice for once._

X X X

 

Sometime in the night, Stiles tried to make a break for it.

A loud bang nearly made Derek fall off the chair he had been sleeping in. Squinting into the dimness, he realised that Stiles had managed to roll himself off the bed and had begun to inch himself forward. As much as he wanted to get up and help the kid, Stiles had grown more and more averse to touch in the last few hours, cowering as if the smallest amount of pressure was like hot knives driving down into his skin. 

So instead, Derek braced his feet against the doorframe and watched Stiles make his slow progress towards him. His crawl was terrifying, it reminded Derek of something from a horror movie, when the demon enters the kid and his bones begin to move in ways they shouldn’t. Derek watched with a sick fascination as Stiles’s shoulder blades dipped and raised, his trembling arms trying to take all of his weight as his knees gave out continuously.

As he made his progress, a strange growling sound had begun to emit from his throat. Saliva dripped onto the floorboards, long wet strands accompanying the hellish noise. It sounded raw and deep, like someone was skinning his vocal cords with a switchblade. With agonising progress, Stiles made the journey from the bed to the doorway.

Without so much as registering Derek’s blocking presence, he attempted to go under his braced leg. Derek watched him for another few seconds before feeling that his observation had begun to verge on the voyeuristic. He dropped his leg down onto Stiles’s neck and put him into a kind of headlock, dragging him upright.

When he got a proper look at the kid, he was no longer sure if his metaphor about the demon child was just a metaphor. In a kind of horrified daze, he tipped Stiles’s chin up to meet the wet, frenzied eyes. He was frothing at the mouth, bubbles of spit were clinging to the corners of his lips as he stared at the opposite side of the room that he had tried so hard to crawl away from.

“ _No,_ oh god no help please _help me_ no, please no more please I _don’t want to,_ please I want my mom, I want my mom, _no more please please PLEASE NO-“_

With a crunching feeling deep in his guts, Derek knew that he wasn’t talking about the drugs; he knew that Stiles was seeing something, something bad. Something a few nights of going cold turkey wouldn’t fix. Stiles had begun to struggle against his grip, attempting to wrench himself from under his arms, kicking his legs against Derek’s ankles repeatedly. Tears ran down his face, and it was only when Derek was this close, trying to hold Stiles’s arms, that he realised the growling sounds Stiles was making weren’t growling sounds.

Stiles was screaming from behind his teeth.

“Hey, no Stiles, listen, Stiles, it’s Derek, it’s _Derek._ It’s okay, you’re in my apartment, you’re safe kid, just relax, you’re safe, _you’re safe.”_

Stiles continued to struggle, the sounds emitting from his throat growing worse and worse as he became unable to vocalise his pain and fear. It was as if a rabid animal had sprung up in him and all matters of agony were now coursing up and down his body.

Derek saw the open mouth through sheer instinct and yanked his arm away to avoid Stiles biting his arm. His teeth closed over thin air with a click and the kid took advantage of the moment to crawl away as fast as his failing body would permit him to. Kicking out of Derek’s swipe at his ankle, he squirmed under the bed and curled into himself. All Derek could see of him was a shivering silhouette and hear wet, cracking sobs.

Convulsively running his fingers through his hair, Derek slid down to where he was crouching against the doorframe. This, he thought, was a low point. What the hell was he doing? What Stiles had said was true. What right did he have to just waltz into this poor kid’s life and put him through all of this? Hadn’t he been through enough? From what Derek had seen of the past few hours, it had begun to feel as if any hell Stiles put himself through was incomparable to this. Had Derek really been this selfish? Had he used Stiles, reduced him to the distressed animal that was now hiding from him?

Derek scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand, willing away the tears he didn’t feel he deserved.

They both stayed in their respective positions for a time, Derek with his head in his hands, Stiles curled under the bed. Everything was so quietly hellish, so infinitely surreal, that Derek had begun to wonder if the apartment had broken away from beneath them and they were simply existing in the dusty fragments of reality that were remaining.

As he contemplated this frankly existential horror, he felt a soft bump against his ribcage. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know what it was. He took one of his hands away from his face and gently rubbed the top of Stiles’s head as he continued to weakly headbutt him, before nestling into the space between Derek’s ribcage and his hip. Trembling hands scrabbled at Derek’s bent leg, hands he knew must feel like they are on fire, like someone was dotting a million lit cigarettes into every open nerve. Stiles looped his arm around the back of Derek’s knee and clung to him, his face still buried in his side.

Derek closed his eyes again and gently rocked Stiles against him, making shushing sounds, trying to evoke the sound of a sea that Stiles had never seen before. He pressed Stiles to him, willing images of the woods into his head, images of flannel shirts and a dad that would never ever leave him. He gave him friends that were both beautiful and kind and some books that would teach him everything he ever wanted to know about the world. With all his might he tried to push this stupid fucking kid into the life he had created for him, but when he opened his eyes they were still on the floor, in the dark, clinging to each other.

 

X X X

 

By the end of the third day, Stiles wasn’t moving.

The violent shivering had finally subsided during the afternoon, leaving Stiles to simply exist in a leaden sort of way, at the mercy of seven attention-starved dogs. At least, thought Derek, their incessant licking had wiped most of the tear stains away.

He lay in a foetal position, his feet tucked under his legs, the only thing reassuring Derek of his ongoing survival being the steady rise and fall of his thin ribcage. When he felt Stiles’s forehead, he was satisfied with his abated fever. He noticed a wrinkle in the kid’s brow.

“S’matter?” His voice was hoarse after hours of non-use.

“H-headache.” Scratch that, his voice was ready for the Grand Ole Opry compared to Stiles.

Derek gave him his methadone and the ibuprofen the doctor had given him. Stiles sipped meekly at the glass of water, his cracked lips barely opening to let the liquid in.

“Stiles, you need to drink.”

Derek would never admit this to anyone as long as he lived, but the moment Stiles threw him his special Stiles-glare, Derek could have wept with relief. From here, they could work. From here, they had grounding.

He gently scratched the back of Stiles’s head, applying and relieving pressure to the base of his skull before moving his way back up. Stiles leaned slightly forward into his touch before cracking an eye open.

“What’re you doing?”

“Giving you a head massage. For your headache, dumbass.”

“Oh.”

“Want me to stop?”

“Nope.”

Derek never thought that he would have missed that obnoxious bubblegum-pop.

 

X X X

 

When he heard the light sound of footsteps against cold floorboards, Derek checked the clock. Quarter to one. That meant he had gotten twenty more minutes sleep than last time. He counted that as a small victory and shifted slightly to accommodate his visitor to the couch.

“You okay?”

Stiles weakly cracked a smile at him, knowing it was a jibe. Earlier that day he had attempted to throw a glass at Derek’s head, screaming “OF COURSE I’M FUCKING NOT OKAY, STOP ASKING ME!” It had taken much apologising and a consoling bag of sherbet slid under the door to get him to lift the bathroom latch.

“Yeah, just y’know, didn’t want to be alone.”

“Yeah.”

“Also to, um, apologise for being such a cunt earlier, that was totally out of order, I was just-“

“Forget it; I was being an insensitive asshole.”

Derek laid a hand on Stiles’s braced wrist. An act that a week earlier, or even a four days earlier, would have made him inexplicably squirm and dwell incessantly. Now, after dragging Stiles’s sweat-stained body to bed more times than he could count, touching between them felt natural, an act of communication that fared far better than words in the kind of situation they were in.

Stiles broke the silence.

“I’m going to relapse.”

Derek looked up at Stiles’s face, half cast in shadow, glumly watching Scott paw grumpily at Trigger, trying to find space in the puppy pile. He sat up straighter.

“Hey, no, don’t be like that.”

“I am. Everyone does. Anyone I’ve ever known who has used has always fallen back on it straight away. That’s what my mom did.”

Derek nodded, inspecting the dark gothic “WOLF” tattooed on the kid’s fingers. “Is that how she-?”

“Kicked it? Yeah. She went off it, got back on and thought she could take as much as she could before she did the detox. She couldn’t.”

Stiles shifted moodily, tucking his legs under himself, squirming closer to Derek’s side. “You know what I think though? I think she knew what she was doing. I think she just didn’t want to see those men anymore.”

Derek slipped an arm around Stiles’s shoulders, suddenly acutely aware how this would look to a stranger. Just chilling here, having a cuddle with my detoxing hooker-friend. Nothing to see here. Move along.

“Is that what you saw? The night before last? Those men?”

Stiles didn’t slam the guards up exactly, not in the way he would have last time he met Derek. He would have made some angry quip about blowjobs and then aggressively flirted his way onto the next topic. Now, he simply fidgeted, dislodging himself slightly from Derek’s hold.

“I dunno man; some jobs just stick with you more than others.”

Realising that Derek wasn’t go to say anything more until he elaborated, Stiles continued. “It’s just, like, there’s some sick puppies out there man, and although I’m the first one to deny it, the truth is, when you don’t want someone to touch you, and they touch you, it’s like they takes away a piece of your soul every time. And if that’s the way it is, where does that leave me?”

Derek, so drained of kind lies, could only give him honesty.

“I don’t know Stiles, I really don’t know.”

 

X X X

 

On the sixth day, Derek brought Stiles back to the doctor.

Oddly enough, for someone who had been so desperate to leave the apartment a few days ago, Stiles was uneasy about leaving what had essentially become his prison for the past few days. After much coaxing on Derek’s part, and assurances that they would come straight back here after the appointment, he exhaled loudly and stepped out the door.

After the doctor had poked and prodded Stiles (“and not in the way I fucking like it” Stiles had grumbled) he deemed him to be “doing okay.” If he kept taking his methadone and ate regular meals, he should be able to build his strength back up gradually.

While Stiles and his stiff joints were making slow progress putting his clothes back on, the doctor took Derek aside and talked quite candidly about relapses and secondary withdrawal symptoms like depression and ongoing panic attacks.

While Derek appreciated his honesty, the idea that Stiles would have to go through another one of those panic attacks was a bit too goddamn awful to comprehend, so he switched the topic to the quite obvious attention disorder that Stiles was suffering from and what the doctor planned to do about it.

The doctor agreed with Derek but cautioned him about putting a new chemical into a body that had so recently experienced such a violent and traumatising detox. Derek wished he could describe in words just _how_ violent and traumatising the whole thing was, but he just nodded. The doctor gave him the name of a GP across town, but advised him not to start taking any Adderall until next month.

All Derek could do was nod along and wonder if he would even know Stiles next month.

 

X X X

 

When Derek saw Stiles leaning against the kitchen counter, he had to admit that the kid looked worse than he ever had before. He was improbably thinner, and exhaustion seemed to roll off him, as if the detox had wiped him so thoroughly that the simple task of existing had become too much. His tattoos, usually so stark against his ivory skin, seemed confused amidst his grey pallor.

But, for the first time, Stiles’s eyes were clear, no longer just sharp but also alert, inquisitive.

He came over to Derek’s position on the couch, which he had turned into his home office, spreading files and pages across every possible surface surrounding him. He was returning to work tomorrow, before Reyes would begin to think that his illness was terminal. During one of her many, many phone calls, she had already threatened to kick the door down to deliver some chicken soup. He had to admit, that woman had her heart in the right place.

But his impending work return meant that he had to catch up on all the files he had neglected over the past few days. In all the terrifying excitement and desperation, he had forgotten how incredibly _fucked_ they were on this case.

He could feel Stiles’s gaze bore into him as he frantically tried to find a page he was _sure_ was in with the rest of the coroner’s reports. Derek looked up in time to see Stiles run a nervous tongue across dry lips.

“What is it?”

“I, um, I’ve made a decision.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Uh huh. Um, because of, y’know, all of the stuff you’ve done for me these past few days, I’ve decided I’m going to do something for you.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, that chapter was a bit longer than any of the previous ones, mostly because I can't tell you how depressing it is to write about someone chucking up. Furthermore, I need to flesh out the details for the next chapter which would be at odds with any of this above misery. 
> 
> Again, if you see anything in my story that you find to be incorrect in terms of facts or description, do not hesitate to notify me.
> 
> Your comments and kudos are literally the petrol (or gasoline, whichever suits you) for the engine of the story, so much love and sherbet (I know, I have an unhealthy obsession with sherbet okay).


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is, for the most part, as bridging chapter to the second half of the story.
> 
> Unbeta'd, forgive and point out mistakes.

 

“No.”

“Dude, just hear me out –“

“ _No_ Stiles.”

“Can you just listen to what I have to say –“

“Fucking _no_ and that’s _it.”_

Derek knew that wouldn’t be it, just as he knew that he was going to get a semi-threatening phone call from Reyes later that night or that Stiles was never going to give him back his favourite baseball cap. For the past three days, Stiles had been trying to wear him down with a constant barrage of arguments and pleas, and along with his big honey-coloured eyes, Derek had to admit the kid had come up with a pretty potent cocktail of persuasion. But he wasn’t backing down on this, no way. Derek was pure principle, and principles didn’t get distracted by outstretched hands or biting implorations.

Stiles shifted in his position on the arm of the couch, patting the leather seat so Trigger could jump up and settle across his feet. Derek made sure that the heat was on constantly, that the apartment was perpetually boiling, but Stiles was always cold.

“Listen, you need me man, you fuckin’ need me and you know it. You can’t get at them unless you have me.”

Derek rubbed his eyes, pressing in the pads of his fingers until miniscule paint splodges exploded behind his eyelids. “Stiles, you’ve already done enough. You’ve told me the night Leon will be getting the drugs of this Ghost Man; you’ve told me who he’ll be with, you don’t need to do anymore.”

“You know as well as I do all that info is bullshit unless I can get to Lee and figure out the drop zone for the product. And it’s not like you can post a fuckin’ cop on every shitty corner of this goddamn city, man. Hell, I can name you whole neighbourhoods that are patrol-free. So.” He wiggled his fingers together in a jazz-hands motion. “Wire me up and I’ll figure it all out for you.”

Derek took a deep breath and considered his plan of resistance. He knew Stiles was exasperated, hell, if he was in his position, he’d be exasperated too. The last few days had been all over the place, a jolting sequence of hope, confusion and retreat. The main problem was that Derek rose early to go to work and could got back late in the evening, so he only saw a Stiles that had spent the entire day alone.

It was becoming more and more evident that secondary withdrawal was setting in, and with it came the depression the doctor had warned about. More than that, Derek couldn’t quite shake the fact that the exhaustion obviously had not yet seeped out of Stiles, that he was still ash-grey and rail-thin. Coupled with the sudden twitches and the white-static screams that came from the bedroom late at night, he knew it was far from over.

For the most part, Stiles just curled up on the couch and watched television. His curiosity in every corner of Derek’s apartment had, for the most part, evaporated. Even Derek’s locked safe was no longer a place of interest. Derek had reluctantly told him that all that was in there were his guns. Rolling his eyes, Stiles sighed “Fuck that shit man, I’ve seen way too many pieces for them to be anything but hella boring. I thought you’d at least have some pornos in there or something. ”

(Derek constantly thanks whatever deity is responsible that Stiles has yet to check the cardboard box on the top shelf of his closet).

Often, Derek would come home to find the kitchen cabinets untouched, and realise that Stiles had forgotten to feed himself again, yet still manage to fill all the dog bowls. It wasn’t a big deal, he told himself. Stiles just wasn’t used to three meals a day. Sure, the doctor had warned him that he was underweight, but what would you expect from a heroin addict?

Former heroin addict?

No, Derek thought, as he stared at Stiles nibbling his thumb nail and scratching Trigger’s snout with his other inked hand. Fuck no, we’re not there yet. We are so far from there.

The only time Stiles seemed to be truly focused on anything was when they discussed Leon’s dealings with this infamous ghost that had been driving Derek and Reyes insane for more than a month. Derek had been right when he first met Stiles; the kid did know a lot more about the new product than he was letting on. But as for the identity of the seller, he could only give a date and a middleman: Leon.

It was strange, how readily Stiles had brought the information to him. He understood that they had formed a kind of a ragged bond, but it didn’t make sense that a street kid as tough and smart as Stiles would so quickly bring up information that could get him killed. Especially to a cop. The only logical explanation Derek could think of was the doctor’s vague warning that patients could become fixated on one subject or task. This hyper-focus was their mind’s attempt to push away the cravings and concentrate on something, anything, that wasn’t the gear. Derek was glad that Stiles was moving forward, but he couldn’t help wishing that Stiles had become fixated on something other than bringing his highly violent pimp to justice. Crocheting or something.

Obviously disliking Derek’s prolonged silence, Stiles decided to chip in with his stand-by phrase.

“Why not?”

Derek hated when he said that, because every time he said it, he could see Stiles’s past mapped out before him, like someone had breathed harshly on the big window and drawn the wonky path that had led Stiles here. Want to try heroin? Why not, my mom’s on it anyway. Want to turn some tricks? Why not, no one will give me a job. Want to die in gutter? Why not, it’s not like anyone will miss me. It was a curious dichotomy in Stiles that was becoming more apparent the more time Derek spent with him: Ferocious in his nature but casual about his existence.

It just wouldn’t fucking do.

“Okay.” Derek crossed his arms and leant against the window. “Give me one good reason why I should send you out to all of those psychos.”

“One? I could give you fucking _hundreds_ man, because in case you’re forgetting, I know those psychos. I grew up with those psychos.”

Derek inclined his head, indicating that Stiles should continue. He sat up a little straighter, dislodging Trigger from his comfortable position. Ignoring the dog’s indignant yelp, Stiles held up his index finger. “Okay fine. Uno, we fuck up this deal for Leon, he’s got no income for the next month at least. That’s like, death for a dealer at his level. More than that, y’all brave enforcers of the law might be able to prosecute the son of a bitch, and after what he did to me last time, I’d be totally okay with that.”

Using every inch of his willpower to hold in his morbid curiosity, Derek didn’t ask, but simply watched Stiles as he got to his feet and began to pace around the room.

“Dos, a sting as big as that would pretty much clean out most of my contacts. Basically, it’d make it pretty goddamn impossible for me to get my hands on any of that good stuff for at least a month or so.” He pointed his two raised fingers at Derek. “And don’t lie; it’d be a massive cleanup for you guys.”

Derek gave a noncommittal shrug and inspected the suddenly wildly interesting whorl patterns in the wood floor, refusing to allow himself to be subjected to the Stiles-Glare. For his sins, he got three heavily tattooed fingers shoved under his nose.

“Tres, yo Derek, _tres._ ”

“Yeah Stiles, I’m with you.”

There was silence for a moment as Stiles leant face first against the window, pressing his nose against the pane like a child. Derek heard him swallow before he said softly “tres...Um...Y’know...I’m not sure how else to repay you. Like, you know I can’t be in debt like this.”

Derek did know. Stiles had been brought up in an environment where you got nothing for free (unless you stole it) and no favours were given (unless you earned it). Out there, whatever someone did for you, you had to pay them back in equal and with interest. Derek could hardly wave it all off and say it was his pleasure, because first of all, it was the furthest thing from pleasure he had ever experienced, and second of all, Stiles simply wouldn’t be able to accept it. He knew they were in a bind in that respect, but it made him feel kind of hollow when he considered that all Stiles thought he could offer him was either a blowjob  or information.

Stiles seemed to take his dismayed silence as being unmoved in his position, and turning his face to rest his cheek against the cool glass, he lightly kicked Derek’s shin. “Besides, you said it yourself that I need to get out more. All those people you talked to are missing me, they remember me dude.”

Derek couldn’t help wincing at the note of happy pride in Stiles’s tone. He couldn’t admit that he _may_ have exaggerated the number of cops and assorted street regulars enquiring after Stiles’s disappearance. True, Stiles had been a well-known and colourful character, but it was simply a fact of life that the streets swallowed people up, and when those people were transient by their very nature, nobody asked many questions. Only Reyes had mentioned Stiles’s absence. “I haven’t seen the kid for like, two weeks, not since we interviewed him.” Derek thought he might have detected a strain of worry in her voice, but that soon disappeared when another fruitless lead landed on her desk and it was back to the gum popping and wisecracks. Derek was relieved; he had always been a shit liar.

“Yeah, but when I meant get out more, I meant like, go to the park or something.”

Stiles snorted. “Nobody wants to go to that fuckin’ park man. Dunno about you, but I prefer not getting mugged or flashed.”

“Fair point.”

They both stared out at the tangled grey mass of blank apartment complexes which almost blocked the nightmarish concrete jungle of shadows and shitty graffiti that lay below them. Their silence was punctuated by a duet of two car alarms which screamed at each other from opposite ends of the block.

“I have to get out there sometime.”

“But do what?”

Stiles bit his lip, and Derek could see his eyes focusing on the north side of the city, as if he could see something that Derek would never be able to.

“I don’t know man.”

 

X X X

 

“No.”

Derek fiddled with Churchill’s collar, attempting to tear his eyes away from the sorry sight lying on his couch. Stiles was flicking weakly at the corner of the coffee table, one skinny ankle with a purple rat tattooed on it dangling over the couch arm. From the depths of the cushion Stiles had been attempting to come up with more logically sound arguments for why he should be sent undercover to ascertain the identity of the city’s new smuggler.

This, Derek guessed, was their punishment for the great day they had yesterday. After a gruelling eleven hours snapping his fingers in front of strung-out informants and yelling at unimpressed corner kids, he dragged himself up the three flights of stairs and blindly shoved the key in the lock to be practically assaulted by colour and sound.

Clearly, Stiles had made good use of the watercolours Derek had picked up for him, as he had stuck up countless paintings around the apartment. Each of the dogs had their own portrait, while Derek himself had at least three, along with other people he didn’t recognise.

Before he could quite take in the colours and the bouncy punk song blaring from the speakers, Stiles had jumped on his back, screaming “THE FLOOR IS LAVA BITCH!” He then promptly leapt off Derek onto the coffee table. The dogs, clearly overjoyed by all the activity, followed suit, bounding in his wake. Catching little Millie mid-jump, Derek shrugged off his jacket, popped the cap off a beer bottle and settled in to watching Stiles trying make it from the kitchen counter to the tabletop without braining himself.

Now, Stiles looked about as ready to jump on the furniture as a flatfish. Derek had been welcomed home with a groan coming under the coffee table. Crouching down, Derek’s enquiries were met with a perfectly logical explanation: Sometime during the day Stiles had accidentally rolled off the couch and hadn’t been bothered to get back up.

By the time he had situated Stiles back on the couch and convince him that food was a thing he needed, Stiles had already gone straight back to his favourite topic.

“Derekkkk, come on. One chance, I won’t fuck it up, promise.”

“No.”

“ _Pleeeeeease.”_

“Really, is that what you’re going to do? You can’t whine your way into confronting a drug lord while wearing a wiretap Stiles.”

Stiles lifted his face from the cushion he had been inhaling for the past ten minutes, and narrowed his eyes.

“Just watch me.”

 

X X X

 

“NO!”

Derek’s roar mingled with the slam of the door and the sudden distressed yelps of the dogs. Breathing harshly, he swatted the constant scrabble of paws against his knees and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. Throwing cold water onto his face, he looked up at his own reflection in the mirror.

_Fuck this noise and fuck that kid._

Bracing his hands on either side of the sink, Derek ducked his head, watching the water swirl down the drain. This whole fucking situation was down the drain. When the doctor had said manic episodes, he thought he’d have no problem dealing with them. Turns out, when Stiles has better control over his limbs, the kid is pretty good at dodging and running. Trying to contain the furious outburst so the neighbours wouldn’t think a particularly violent murder was taking place, Derek had made the very, very incorrect decision to grab Stiles’s wrist.

Oh boy, did he regret that now.

Defeat suddenly weighed heavy on him, and for moment he was transported back to when his parents would argue. Earth shattering screaming matches that could last up to an hour, that would send all of the kids running in opposite directions. There was one particularly bad one; Derek couldn’t remember the cause of it, probably credit card bills or whose turn it was to pick up Laura from boxing practice or something stupid like that. After an argument which sounded like the side of a mountain falling off, his mother had stormed out of the room. His father got up, clearly intending to follow her and continue the argument. His Uncle Peter had laid a hand on his father’s shoulder and said softly “give her time, let her cool off.”

Was that what he was supposed to do with Stiles? Let him cool off? Fuck no, Uncle Peter was always full of shit anyway. Get a grip Hale, of course the kid didn’t need cooling off, he was always fucking _freezing_. Which reminded him –

Stiles didn’t have a jacket.

Derek looked out the window. The streets were still black-damp from last night’s rain and the sky was threatening more. Without another thought, Derek grabbed the warmest jacket he could find and headed outside into the night.

By the time he had reached the ground floor he realised how difficult this search would be. Stiles was a true alley cat, he knew every crack and corner of the surrounding area. It would take him seconds to slip into the shadows and never be seen again if he felt like it. Glancing around the blank and empty streets surrounding him, Derek was dismayed to feel drops of water on his forehead. As if on cue, the rain had arrived.

But he had not walked more than a few steps before he heard it. That familiar, wracking gasping sound that could only mean one thing.

Stiles.

He found him crouched in an alley behind some trash cans, his head in his hands. It sounded like his lungs were trying to inhale the whole city, the streets, the buildings, the people and the black smog above them all. His white t-shirt was damp with sweat and rain, and in the glare of the streetlight, Derek could see the dark outlines of his tattoos through the fabric.

Crouching beside him, Derek gently clasped the back of his neck, giving it a comforting squeeze.

“Breathe Stiles, I’m here.”

Stiles tried a wobbly exhalation that seemed to die behind his teeth, allowing only a kind of tortured hum to seep through.

“Again.”

Derek didn’t know how long they crouched in the filth waiting for Stiles’s attack to subside, but after awhile, Stiles slumped forward, burying his face in Derek’s t-shirt. Now both completely soaked to the skin, Derek’s brain helpfully reminded him that Stiles was only wearing a sweatpants and an over-sized wife beater. He slung the extra jacket over the kid’s shoulders, whispering comforting nonsense as he did it.

“Derek?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this a relapse?”

Derek’s blood ran cold. Had Stiles shot up? Had he even given him enough time to make a deal and shoot up? Of course he had, in this city, you sneeze and a dealer pops up from behind a wall. Stiles could easily have –

Oh god, had he?

“Did you, um, do anything?”

Stiles’s eyes filled with glassy tears. “No, but –“

From the lining of his sweatpants, he took out a small bag. Derek could see quite clearly that its seal was unbroken. They both stared at it as the droplets of rain hit it. Impulsively, Derek snatched it out of Stiles’s hand and threw it, as far as he could, into the depths of the alley. He heard a cat screech in surprise. Stiles buried in face in Derek’s neck and gave an agonised groan.

“I know, I know.”

It hadn’t taken much to Stiles back up to the apartment, he was so distraught that Derek had the feeling he could bring him into the state penitentiary and he wouldn’t have noticed. The kid sat heavily on the sofa, staring blankly at the sketch of a she-wolf and her cub that he had been working on earlier before he flipped out.

Derek braced his hands on Stiles’s knees and forced him to look him directly in the eye. “Listen, Stiles. Listen to me. That, right there, wasn’t a relapse. That was nothing okay? That was not a setback, that was not a relapse, that was nothing. Right?”

Stiles nodded dumbly, allowing Derek to bring him new clothes and meekly slipping into them. He was silent throughout dinner, simply nodding or grunting at Derek’s valiant attempts to start conversation. By the time they had settled on the couch and were attempting to select a movie, Derek had resigned himself to a one-sided conversation for the night. But then, Stiles spoke.

“If you won’t let me get at Leon, I’ll go to Detective Reyes. She’ll let me go in no problem.”

Derek took a swig of his beer and swept a hand over his eyes. “And what then?” In answer to Stiles’s questioning expression, he elaborated. “What happens when you go in? When you get hurt? What will happen to me?”

To his horror, a lump had somehow formed in the back of his throat. He swallowed it down, inspecting the ridges on a bottle cap, trying to gather every piece of courage he had to meet Stiles’s white-hot stare. “I...Need you to be okay Stiles, do you understand that?”

A heartbeat of silence.

Then, a hand with the Day of the Dead skull settled on his knee. The “WOLF” on his fingers hugged his kneecap.

“I understand.”

“But” Derek took a deep breath. “I also know that you need to bury these guys. I know you need to. You’ve been too much to just walk away from it all, I know this isn’t the movies. I know that Stiles.”

He waited for Stiles to interject, but when he didn’t, he carried on. “We’ll go down to the station tomorrow morning. We’ll see how it goes from there.”

The grip on his knee tightened.

“Thank you.”

 

X X X

 

“ _Yes!”_

Reyes’s enthusiasm for the plan jolted both Derek and Stiles from their respective thoughts. Slapping the yellow files in front of her, she put her feet up on the table in the interrogation room, her sharp glossy heels catching the light impressively.

“This is great, this is so fucking great, this is _perfection_. Stiles, this is _gold_.” She moved from her position and began to pace the room, tapping Derek on the elbow in a manner he knew to mean _you did good Hale_. He glanced at the slightly bemused Stiles, whose eyes flicked back ahead of him. It was eerie, seeing Stiles in the interrogation room that he had first met him in, wearing the same clothes and the same expression.

It was strange, how Stiles had morphed back into the Stiles of a fortnight ago the moment he had stepped into the station. Gone was the Stiles who loved sherbet and late night movies, replaced with the spiky little character which Derek had first met, feral and alluring, a skinny alley cat that would slash you to pieces before curling up next to your body and purring loudly.

Derek knew it was all an act, but he couldn’t help feeling disconcerted. He wondered if he looked any different, if he had returned to the station apparently the same man. Reyes, apparently confident in the consistency of each of their personalities, powered on.

“Listen, this will go without a hitch kid, this will be as easy as your one two fuckin’ threes, we’ll have you in and out of there in no time –“

“Yeah” Stiles interrupted loudly “awesome. I need to take a piss.”

Erica actually _smiled_ at him (albeit one that showed a little bit too much gritted teeth) and tapped lightly on the door, instructing the officer who answered to bring Stiles to the bathroom. When they left, Reyes turned back to Derek.

“He’s fucking insane.”

“I know.”

“He’s walking into the Lion’s Den.”

“ _I know_.”

Clearly sensing she had touched a nerve, Erica shuffled her files busily. “He’ll have all those contracts to sign, and you know how they read like a goddamn quantum mechanics textbook.”

“I’ll help him.” It was only a fraction of a second later that Derek realised he had nominated himself too fast. Reyes looked straight at him, her feline eyes boring into his. However, Derek had just spent two weeks living with Stiles Stilinski, and he had quickly learnt how to deal with glares like that.

“What?”

“Did you fuck him?”

Derek always did appreciate the straightforward approach, and he was glad that at least one of his answers would be honest.

“Jesus, no.”

“How did you find him then?”

“I was on my way home from the store with a six-pack last night when I bumped into him. He said he’d been meaning to talk to us about the case, said he’d had a change of heart. Leon had done something to him, dunno what. He wants to bury the guy. Fucking hell Reyes.”

Well, half-truths were better than nothing. Reyes never needed to know that last night Stiles and Derek were eating Chinese takeout and watching reruns of Saved by the Bell, having animated arguments over the importance of Mario Lopez’s mullet to his overall hotness. Stiles just couldn’t accept the fact it was a fashionable hairstyle at the time.

Reyes looked at him in a way that made him positive that she suspected more than she was letting on, but all she did was lean over to him and grab his wrist a little tighter than was strictly necessary, in Derek’s opinion.  Her voice was low, and there was a hiss in it that Derek had only heard her use on the most difficult of suspects.

“That kid has been used and abused enough Hale, so just make sure you do not fuck this up.”

She quickly released his wrist as the door reopened, her violently bright smile sliding back onto her face. 

“All set Stiles?”

Stiles glanced at Derek, the dim panic in his eyes clearly seeking some kind of sign of comfort. Derek gave him a small smile and in reaching past him to open the door, gently brushed against the “WOLF” on his knuckles. Stiles looked at Reyes and nodded.

“Let’s get you fitted for a wire then.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the song Stiles was listening to was 'Kate Is Great' by The Bouncing Souls. Because Stiles has a fucking stellar taste in music okay?
> 
> Also, he will always maintain he's more of a Zach Morris fan anyway. 
> 
> Thank you all for your wonderful comments and all the kudos. You all deserve little puppies that you can cuddle indefinitely. (Unless you're not a dog person, then you can have a kitten. And if you don't want the kitten, well then you're a lost cause and I can't help you).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There are some graphic descriptions of injury in this chapter. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, forgive and point out mistakes.

 

“You ready to go kiddo?”

This SWAT team official seemed like a nice guy, Derek thought. Seemed like the type who could efficiently execute an undercover drugs bust and be home on time to tuck the kids in. Derek could appreciate that in a person, he honestly could. He always admired people who could separate their job from their outside life. When he considered the situation he was about to embark on, he reckoned he had probably failed spectacularly in that particular area of expertise. So that was probably why he wanted the guy to just fuck off. Perhaps he was under the impression that his soft words would set Stiles at ease or something. The man’s sympathetic eyes slid backwards and forwards, in time with the dime Stiles was rolling across his knuckles. A few nights ago, in an attempt to alleviate Stiles’s boredom, Derek decided to teach him how to coin walk. Predictably, Stiles had quickly become completely enamoured with the trick, and after several instances of irretrievable coins under the fridge, Derek had to admit he was becoming pretty good at it.

The letters, stars and numerous other markings on his fingers rose and fell in time to the coin’s walk, the surface bones of the back of his hand pulling and releasing delicately. Stiles looked up at the agent, wicked grin already set in place.

“Ready as I’ll ever be Mister Man.”

Derek could feel his face slide a cold smile. The agent nodded uncertainly and turned away, apparently unnerved by this joint audience of fire and ice. Derek rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand, hoping that none of the other team members approached them. It just irritated him that, to all appearances, Stiles was born to do this. In the eyes of the division, he might as well be gift-wrapped, a ready-made street kid, rough and numb to any kind of notions of self-preservation. But Derek could see it; see the slight widening of the eyes, the almost imperceptible shiver that could simply be mistaken as a junkie’s twinge. And along with last night’s screams of pure terror, this was all the proof Derek needed that nobody should have to deal with this shit.

However, there were other people who were of an entirely different mind to Derek. Quite a number of people, in fact. Stiles’s little idea had somehow turned into a major operation, one that Reyes had booted all the way up to the Chief, who had come galloping out of his office to wish them all luck. Derek couldn’t help but notice that after the Chief had shook hands with Stiles, he had surreptitiously wiped his hand in his trousers.

God, he hated this fucking city.

Even Reyes seemed to be nervous, badgering their sweaty little wiretapper, Mallin, to check and recheck Stiles’s wire. It had been something of a task to try and tape the wire in a way in which it wouldn’t be noticeable. Stiles usually wore small t-shirts or raggedy wife beaters, neither of which would be conducive to hiding an interception device. And, as Stiles himself pointed out, it was hardly like he could march in with a bulky jacket on. After much squirming and protestations on Stiles’s part, they had finally secured a device that was entirely unnoticeable. Or at least, it looked that way to Derek.

Jesus, was it?

Derek was startled from his reverie that had been slowly mounting into full-blown panic by a small slap on the linoleum floor. Stiles had dropped the coin. The kid bent to pick it back up, but with his almost non-existent fingernails and that persistent tremor, he seemed to be having difficulties. Derek picked it off the floor, pressed it back into Stiles’s palm, right into the centre of the yellow smiley face. He could feel the slight dampness of the skin underneath his fingertips.

“Stiles needs to go to the bathroom” he announced to Reyes.

“Well Jesus fucking Christ okay, but remember we’re leaving in five. Also, don’t mess up that goddamn wire or I will have both of your balls.”

“Calm the hell down, the thing isn’t even switched on yet.”

The bathroom, reeking of stale piss and the dried come that stuck together the pages of pornos stuffed behind toilets, wasn’t exactly the safe haven Derek was hoping for, but in the current situation it had to do. He turned to face Stiles, who looked torn between being slightly puzzled and not really giving a shit.

“Derek, I don’t really need to go.”

Derek nodded distractedly, turning his watch on his wrist. “I know, I know, I just wanted to make sure that you’re okay, you know, that you’re not going to flip out.” He swallowed, continuing to spin his watch round and round his wrist. “Stiles, you’re um, walking into a serious situation here, and I really need you to walk back out, you know?”

To his surprise, Stiles stood on his tiptoes and pressed their foreheads together. “Don’t worry Sourwolf, I’m invincible.”

 

X X X

 

It hadn’t taken long to locate the correct apartment in the handful that Leon owned. It was one of the flophouses; Leon himself never lived in it. Derek felt a strange sense of security in the fact that the world might come to an end tomorrow but dealers would continue to operate on their mantra: don’t shit where you eat.

They were parked around the corner; the SWAT team discreetly placed the next street over, there only in case of emergency. This was a simple identification and location job, all Stiles had to get was a drop-zone for the product and he was home-free.  The simplicity of the plan undercut the severity of the individuals involved, which is why they were placed at what Reyes called “a safe distance” but what Derek thought of as “too fucking far away.”

His kneecaps shifted uncomfortably against Erica’s. She glared at him, as if it was _his_ fault Mallin owned the nastiest surveillance van either of them had ever been in. Derek was trying to look anywhere but at the sweaty little goblin with his eyes fixed on the control panel, shovelling handfuls of greasy chips into his overflowing mouth. Every now and then he would risk a glance at the two detectives, who he clearly considered to be impinging on his kingdom of burger wrappers.

It wasn’t like they had much more to do than stare wordlessly at each other. Nothing had really happened. They had watched Stiles shuffle his way in the dark to the entrance of the miserable apartment complex and by the time Derek had managed to wrestle down his wild urge to grab Stiles and run the opposite direction, the kid was upstairs.

So now, they wait.

It was clear just listening to the low mumbling conversation that none of the heavies had arrived yet. Stiles seemed to be talking to a guy called Isaac; a fellow rent boy that Stiles had assured Derek was “a bambi-eyed motherfucker but a real nice dude, I’ve known him for years.” Derek had no idea what they were saying or who they were talking about but he could tell from the lazy tone of the conversation that the two were simply bullshitting the time away.

Erica made a small “tsk” noise and began to tap-tap-tap with her cranberry-coloured talons against the desk. Mallin looked up from what Derek had been assuming was some kind of feeding frenzy.

“Could you _not_ do that?”

“You’re the one who said I couldn’t smoke in here, I need a fucking cigarette.”

“Jee-sus wept, you want to turn my van into a fucking hotbox? The smoke would interfere with my goddamn devices and then guess who’d –“

“WHERE THE _FUCK_ HAVE YOU BEEN?”

The scratch of the man’s voice seemed to almost short out the connection. In the deathly silence that followed, Derek vaguely considered that he had always expected Leon’s voice to be lower than that. Instead it was pure rust, a pen knife across an unturned violin string.

Stiles, however, seemed remarkably undeterred by the jarring voice that was coming over the receiver. “Lee, hey baby. Didn’t Gerbil get that message to you?”

“Message? What fucking message? The fucking message that you were just going to _disappear?_ ”

Suddenly, a sharp smack echoed over the speakers. Convulsively, Derek squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the sides of the chair. Last night, Stiles had warned him this would happen. “For Leon” he had said, sardonic smile in place, “A slap is like a polite hello. So don’t like, freak out or nothing, ‘kay?”

_I’m not freaking out Stiles, I swear to God I’m not freaking out, I’m not I’m not I’m not._

There was a heartbeat of silence as Stiles seemed to be getting his bearings back. Even with his eyes shut, Derek could hear Erica swallowing nervously. When he reopened his eyes, she had her hair up, and Derek could see her fingers inching toward the door handle. He shook his head vehemently at her. He and Stiles had gone over this story more times than Derek could count, the kid had this.

“Uh, you know, the rich old john that turned up on my corner a couple of weeks ago? The condo guy?”

Apparently Leon was still nonplussed, as Stiles launched into greater detail. “This old guy rolls up couple of weeks ago and said his wife had fucked off to some holiday with their daughters and asked if I wanted to hang around for a few days. The dude was driving a fucking _Bentely_ man, I wasn’t going to just be like no fuck off. So I told Gerbil to tell you that I had a long date.”

A low thunk, and a cry of pain.

“ _FUCK_ man, my fucking _hand!_ Jeeeesus argh - _”_

“Lose the bullshit Stiles, you’re lucky I didn’t break your fucking fingers again. I heard fuck all from Gerbil. But more importantly: How. Much.”

Through his horrified daze, Derek heard the dull thud of the duffel bag as Stiles set it on the table. Carefully counted, each one of the bills had been marked, so if things went fuck-shaped, they could at least get Leon on procuring.

“I-it’s all in there. I knew you’ve be here ‘cause of that deal you’ve got going down, so I figured I’d bring it to you before you came and fucked it out of me.”

Another slap.

“Christ Stiles, keep your mouth _shut”_ Erica groaned. Derek could only duck his head, running his fingers convulsively through his hair.

After a moment of banknotes rustling, Leon let out a whoop of delight. “ _Sweet!_ That. That right there, that is what the _fuck_ I’m talking about. Isaac, you seeing this shit? This is what you should be taking in, this is fucking _business initiative_ right here. You, sweetheart, you are a fucking _angel.”_

A different kind of smacking sound reverberated around the van. Derek’s guts rolled as he realised that Leon had planted a celebratory kiss on Stiles. Stiles didn’t say anything; all Derek could hear was Leon’s gleeful smoke-infested chuckle intermingling with Erica’s sigh of relief.

“First hurdle down.”

Derek gave a tight nod, not trusting himself to open his mouth. Now that Stiles was in Leon’s good books, all he’d have to do would be to ease himself into a conversation regarding the ghost dealer and they could just get him the hell out of there.

“Well this day could not get any better, my best boy isn’t dead in some gutter, and the whole time he was fucking _earning_ and then to make shit even better, the deal is going down sooner rather than later. What a _fucking_ day!”

Mallin leaned closer to the numerous knobs and switches under his fingers, adjusting the volume. Finally, they were at what they wanted.

Stiles took his chance. “So when’re we seeing the china white gear again? This the deal that’s coming up soon?”

“Soon?  you’re standing right in the middle of it baby. Our friend should be walking in any minute now.”

Any.

Minute.

Now.

Every particle in Derek’s body seemed to receive an electric shock and then freeze over in double-quick time. Barely trusting himself to breathe, he looked up at Erica, whose eyes were black with fear, her lips forming the words “shit shit shit shit shit.”

They were not prepared for this. The SWAT team was a road over, they didn’t have any snipers trained on the apartment windows, and they had a fucking _wired up informant_ what was going to become a room infested with high-end drug dealers.

Oh, and said wired up informant was Stiles.

Shit indeed.

Erica clasped her hands together, as if in prayer. “Please let him keep it together, please.” Keep it together? Derek just wanted him out of there, and if that meant wrenching the door open and barrelling into the apartment, then so be it. Of course, all that would achieve would be Stiles getting pumped full of bullets. Oh Jesus, don’t think about that Hale, don’t even think about –

“He’s coming here?”

Even through the haze of panic that was running up and down Derek’s spinal column, he had to admit he felt a soft pressing sensation of pride when he heard Stiles’s voice. The kid might as well have been asking about the weather, for all the fear he was showing. Still, when he thought about it, Stiles had spent a good chunk of his life faking it, whether it was pleasure or fortitude. A few nights ago, after some post-dinner beers, Stiles had stood barefoot on the coffee table, his hand over his heart in mock sincerity. “I” he had proclaimed “am an actor. And the world” he gestured flamboyantly around the room, “is my stage.”

“Yep” Leon said, “cops got jackshit on him and his guys, so we figured, why fucking bother with a secondary location, I mean, all it means is more fucking hassle, and let’s face it, he’s a busy man so -“

There was a moment of silence as Leon seemed to pause, before laughing mirthlessly. “Listen to me boys, talking business with a fucking rent boy.” Low chuckles reverberated in the speakers, Leon’s soldiers finally making their presence known. Derek could hear what he presumed to be the snapping of fingers. “Yo, you two, make yourself fuckin’ useful, clear this shit up, put some of this booze in the fridge.”

Derek could hear Stiles and Isaac obeying Leon’s orders, as the sound of clinking bottles pressed hard against the speakers. The noises of the group became muffled as the two boys moved away from the conversation. For a few minutes, the only sound that filled the van was the subdued drawling and swearing of Leon’s crew and Reyes beginning to tap her nails against the panel again, blatantly ignoring Mallin’s ferocious glare.

Two polite knocks on the door silenced all. Derek held his breath as he heard the door opening, barely controlling the fear that was now coursing through him. Amidst the croaks of “yo” and “whassup man”, he could have sworn he heard a genial “hello.”

Great. He’s a fucking gentleman.

“I hope you don’t mind if your men display their weapons, simply a matter of security, I’m sure you understand.” His tone was clipped, with an education running through it. Reyes’s eyebrows looked like they were about to disappear under her hair line. It wasn’t often they came across such refined men of the trade in this part of the city. More to the point, they weren’t known to attend the wholesale. This wasn’t fucking Breaking Bad.

Leon’s voice was forced, as if he was trying very hard to appear as sophisticated as the man he had been presented with. “Um, of course, yeah totally man, be my guest or whatever.” Apparently satisfied with this, the man asked about Stiles and Isaac. At this, even Mallin looked up from his work. If the ghost man ordered a search on Stiles, they were doomed, they were more than doomed, they were completely and utterly _fucked_ –

“Nah, s’good, those are mine. I don’t let my boys carry pieces; I don’t even let them carry mace. Bad for business, y’see.”

A collective sigh seemed to make the very van sag with relief. As the usual formalities took place, Erica got the SWAT team on the radio.

“Come in, target one has actually entered the apartment. So, recalibrate. Unless some kind of holy shit goes down, we wait until they close the deal, and are exiting the complex. Then we nab ‘em.”

“Roger that.”

“We’ve got an unarmed informant in the room with them, and I don’t want any blood boys.”

“We got you Detective.”

Derek was glad that Reyes was taking charge, because it was becoming more and more evident to him that he couldn’t move a muscle. Apart from the static hum of the receiver, all he was able to concentrate on was a moth that had somehow gotten into the van. What had before been a kind of placid fluttering around their ears, dodging the lazy swats of Mallin, had turned into a full-scale assault on the window pane. It frantically beat its wings against the blacked-out window, unable to understand why it couldn’t leave. Derek just hoped that it didn’t look down at the van’s window ledge. Half a dozen rotted moths corpse huddled at the corner.

It was clear that during Derek’s moth-related existential crisis, business had been going down in the apartment. Considering the excited mutterings coming down the line, it was viewing time. Derek watched as Reyes leant forward in her seat, as if she could almost see the heroin through the speakers.

“Jesus, that’s pure.”

“Grade A, white as you can get, you’re not going to get anything sweeter than that coming in on the docks anytime soon.”

“Too fucking right. Mind if I get one of my boys to take a taste?”

“Oh, I insist.”

“Stiles, it’s your lucky day. Get your ass over here.”

“No, I’m good boss, I’ll let Isaac taste.”

Derek swept a hand over his face, scrunching his eyes closed until stars exploded behind them. He could hear Reyes whispering in disbelief. “The fuck is he playing at? When’s Stiles Stilinski turned down gear?”

Leon was clearly thinking the same thing. “Not the time for fucking jokes Stiles, Isaac knows fuck all about tasting product. I’m not asking you to shoot up in front of everyone, just take a lick. _Now._ ”

The last word made Derek understand why Stiles fought against invisible demons in his sleep, it made him understand why he screamed until it sounded like his lungs were about to collapse. This was the shepherd, the harbinger of terror. This man sent Stiles out into the middle of the night and the kid would never ever come back whole.

Derek felt the small words more than heard them.

“I-it’s um, good. I mean, it’s great. It’s really great.”

A clap of hands seemed to punctuate Derek’s dismay. He could almost see Leon’s sliding smile of smug self-satisfaction.

“Well! There ya go, you’ve got the connoisseur’s compliments right there man. So that’s thirty pounds altogether?”

“Unfortunately not.”

Through his jolt of fear, Derek registered Reyes’s head snapping up, reaching for the radio.

“Excuse me?”

“Fifteen for you, fifteen for a Mr Donald Gaskins.”

“Donald Gaskins? As in Big Donnie up on Madison corner?”

“I believe that is the name he goes by, yes.”

“And you fucking realise we’ve been in a turf war with that cunt for nearly five years?”

Derek felt like he was dreaming, as if the air around him had turned to water, making it difficult to wrench his vest over his head and scrabble for his gun, while at the same time reaching for the door. Reyes was whispering furious commands down the radio while Mallin was dialling the station furiously, his sweaty fingers punching the buttons.

“And Mr Knight, you realise that this is a business, correct? I have neither the time nor the patience for your petty turf wars godforsaken corners.”

“ _PETTY?_ Fucking petty?! That asshole Donnie shot my cousin Marlo! He fucking shot him! And if you think I’m going to split _my_ fucking share with that scumbag, I swear to god I’ll –“

The ghost man’s voice was calm. “You’ll do what Mr Knight?”

In the gloom of silence, Derek could have sworn he heard the click of a safety going off.

He was moving in slow motion, not fast enough, never fast enough. Reyes signalled a number of complicated gestures at the SWAT, who began to creep like ants to the tall building. Dimly, Derek heard a hundred other silent onlookers scurrying back into their respective pits of hell. Whispers filled the night as the pavement became like hot quicksand under his feet.

Then, a shot.

Derek was suddenly already at the door of the complex, his free hand stretching out to open the apartment door, the other clutching at his gun. He could hear Reyes hot on his shoulder, continuing to whisper commands to the team, who silently pattered behind them.

A volley of shots and a single, very familiar scream, sent them running.

 

X X X

 

It was carnage.

With the element of surprise, it had taken the team only seconds to disarm the ghost man and his two cohorts. Another of his men lay with half of his chest cavity blown away. Reyes had them face down on the ground, their hands behind their back, roaring at them not to move. Their faces were forced into the blood of their dead compatriot.

It was clear that one of the guns had been an automatic, because of the sheer scale of the damage. The owner had either been very good or very bad with the gun, take your pick. The carpet squelched with blood, flecks of red seemed to have hit every surface. Massive arterial sprays decorated the wall; most of this due to the man who Derek assumed had been Leon. When one of the agents turned him over, he swore in disgust. Leon’s entire face had been blown off. Three other men lay slumped against various walls and furniture.

Derek hardly spared this sight more than a glance, however. He was too intent on following the small frantic gasps that were coming from under the table in the kitchen. An arm with an array of chasing wolves was visible from behind the table leg.

Stiles had managed to drag Isaac under the table. And, when Derek crouched down in front of him, was in the process of trying to put the kid’s head back together. Isaac’s doe eyes were glassy and his mouth half open in surprise, as if his current state of death was of a mild inconvenience to him. Stiles clamped his hand over what was left of the side of the kid’s head, as if he was trying to apply pressure to the wound.

All he was really doing was holding Isaac’s skull together.

When Derek reached out to him, Stiles shrank back, pulling Isaac’s body to him.

“Stiles, it’s me, it’s Derek.”

Recognition lit the pupils of Stiles’s eyes and he reached out to Derek. Derek clasped his hand, wet with blood and brain matter. “Stiles, listen to me, we have to go now.” Stiles nodded, whimpering. “You’ve gotta do something Derek, there’s too much blood, he’s going to die if we don’t get him to a hospital –“

“Stiles –“

“He’s really pale Derek, we need to get him –“

“ _Stiles, look at him.”_

Stiles slowly looked down at what was left of Isaac’s head. He stared down at it, as if everything that ever happened to him was playing and replaying on the side of poor Isaac’s caved-in skull. By degrees, he released his hold on the body before looking back up at Derek.

“Please get me out of here.”

Trying to rally himself against the shakes that were threatening to wreak havoc on his body, Derek lifted Stiles to his feet. Tucking the kid under his arm, he led him over the mess and out of the apartment, trying to shield his eyes from the Boschian hell that had unfolded before them. As they clattered unsteadily down the stairs, the now not-so-genial scream of the ghost man came floating after them from the open door.

“It’s always the whores, it’s always _THE FUCKING WHORES_!”

 

X X X

 

On reflection, this was definitely all Greenberg’s fault.

Fucking Greenberg.

If he hadn’t suggested Derek for that promotion, he’d be at home right now, asleep in his bed, surrounded by his dogs. He’d have watched his shark programmes; he’d have gone over some reports. He’d have gotten up the next morning with a comfortable sense of moderate achievement.

If it hadn’t been for Greenberg, he wouldn’t presently be given a police escort home, clutching a trembling teenage prostitute to his side.

Derek stared out the window. It was almost dawn. The watery sunlight was just peeking out from behind grey rooftops and complexes. Stiles had taken a good half an hour in the showers at the station. He had been give a spare t-shirt and sweatpants which dwarfed him and Derek couldn’t help but notice that underneath his tattoos, his hands were red-raw from scrubbing away the blood.

While Stiles was in the shower, Derek had been trying to come up with a plausible plan for where he was taking the kid. He had been all set with some anonymous safe house story, but no one seemed that interested. Reyes and the team were far too elated with finally taking in the man that had been stocking the city for the past month. Reyes had slapped him on the back, her usual punctuation mark for the end of a search.

“Yeah, that was fucked up, but still” she said “that was a victory Hale.”

Derek still couldn’t get the image of Stiles trying to hold Issac’s skull together out of his head.

“Yeah, a victory.”

 

X X X

 

The moment he opened the door to the apartment, Derek motioned to the dogs to go to the other room. Confused by the abrupt dismissal and the distinct scent of misery, they padded away with their tails between their legs.

Derek turned to Stiles, about to offer him something to eat. However, at the thought of food, his stomach gave an uncomfortable roll of nausea. In attempt to hide his sudden loss for words, Derek went to the kitchen and pulled out Stiles’s medication that he had been due to take earlier that night. Without comment, Stiles swallowed the pills and picked at the hole in the arm of the couch.

“Can I take a bath?”

Derek started before nodding. He held his tongue about the fact that Stiles had already taken a shower. He had gotten blood on his hands before, and he knew that no matter how many times you washed you were never clean until you were.

He drew the kid a bath and paced around the living room. _It’s time to get a grip Hale_. Alright, this was not a good situation. In fact, he really couldn’t fathom a worse situation right now. But the reality was that Stiles was still in the secondary stages of withdrawal, and more than that, had recently been forced to be the taster in some fucked-to-hell deal and oh god –

No, he thought, as he dragged his hand across the dust-covered top of the TV. No, he had to keep it together, because all of this will sure as hell trigger _something_ if Stiles doesn’t have something to anchor himself onto. He collapsed onto the couch with his hands hanging between his knees, allowing these thoughts to whirl up and around him.

It was only after twenty minutes that Derek thought Stiles had been in the bath quite a long time. Knocking softly on the door, he was met with no answer. Opening it slightly, Derek peered into bathroom. Steam flooded out to him and Derek took a second to adjust his eyes. He couldn’t see Stiles. The bath seemed to be full of water, almost overflowing actually, as if it had been pushed up by something –

Something lying at the bottom.

With a shout, Derek rushed over to the bath. Stiles was lying there, eyes closed, still clothed. Derek plunged his hands into the water, and the moment he touched Stiles, the kid’s eyes shot open, grabbing Derek’s wrist, his grip stronger than anything Derek had felt from him before. Almost clambering into the bath, Derek dragged Stiles up out of the water, pushing his sopping hair back. He coughed and spluttered, blinking the droplets of water from his eyes.

“Derek, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it wasn’t – I wasn’t – It wasn’t anything like bad, I just needed to not hear stuff and then I kind of forgot I was down there and Derek I’m so fucking _sorry-”_

Derek shook his head vigorously, trying to force his heart back down into his chest. “Jesus fucking _Christ_ Stiles –“

He managed to fully climb into the bath, disregarding the pools of water that jumped out onto the floor, and bring Stiles against him properly, allowing him to clamber onto his lap and wrap his arms around his neck.  He could feel Stiles’s heart beat a violent tattoo against his chest, and he tightened his hold around his waist. Stiles nuzzled the underside of Derek’s jaw, breathing harshly against the wet skin. He answered back, gently ghosting his lips against the curve of Stiles’s ear.

He doesn’t know, and will never know, who kissed who. All he remembers is Stiles’s lips being on his and suddenly not feeling so _alone_ anymore. Through the clash of teeth and the frantic pecks his fear began to transform into vitality and a fucking _need_ for this stupid, perfect human being. Stiles pressed into him, allowing Derek entrance into his mouth, making a soft needy moan at the back of his throat. His hands clutched frantically at the sodden material of Derek’s shirt. Derek prised his fingers away from it and intertwined them with his own.

Stiles gripped back.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My computer is broken so wish me luck trying to write some of dat sexual healin' on my cousin's laptop. Also you may have noticed I've stretched it out to eight chapters. I fondly remember a time when I thought this would literally take three chapters. Three.
> 
> As always, your comments and kudos are literally the fuel to my fire, and I wish you a lifetime of supply of Beyoncé playing every time you walk into a room.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good god, I apologise for the wait. Feel free to really revel in spotting grammatical errors. Like, really go to town on it. I DESERVE IT.

 

 

Somewhere between the bath and the doorframe, Derek tasted salt.

“What’s the matter?”

Stiles ducked his head, scrubbing his eye with the heel of his hand. “Nothing, nothing...It’s just...You, you like, make everything better.” Plucking absently at the neckline of Derek’s t-shirt and keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the midsection of his collarbone, he mumbled something.

“Huh?”

“I said...I said I didn’t know someone could do that.”

Derek brushed his mouth against Stiles’s lower lip, kissing him slower.

_Slower. Slower._

 He knew he had to do this right, he knew that. This couldn’t be another goddamn knot in the string of polite one-night stands that he had been threading since he left Beacon Hills. This couldn’t be one of the quick, cheap fumbles that had taken up Stiles’s nights since god knows when. This, this right here, had to be slow. It had to be a blot of paint in the water, unfolding gently, its threads of colour diluting into a clouded mixture of...of... _something -_

Derek didn’t have time to eloquently finish the onslaught of romantic metaphors that were blossoming in his head. His hands, clearly impatient with him, had somehow found the narrow gap between the top of Stiles’s soaked sweatpants and the hem of his similarly sodden t-shirt. Derek traced a finger across his hipbone, gripping it convulsively when Stiles’s tongue swept along his bottom lip.

_Hello there._

Making the astute tactical decision that it was time to move from the bathroom and the pools of water that they were standing in, Stiles wrapped his arms around the back of Derek’s neck. Taking the hint, Derek hooked his arms around Stiles’s hips and lifted him up. Stiles’s legs wrapped his waist convulsively, nipping him gently as the kiss deepened with gravity.

After managing to nearly brain Stiles against the doorframe, they somehow succeeded in reaching the bedroom. Derek pressed Stiles down onto the mattress, allowing himself to be dragged down with him. Nudging Stiles’s chin, he kissed his exposed throat, pushing up his shirt to allow him to trail kisses down to his navel. He paused, breathing in the skin underneath him, as if he could inhale the ink that was sewn into this body beneath him. The wolves and the words and all the fantastic bullshit that made Stiles Stiles.

_Slower. Slower._

Derek felt the skin shudder, and looked up to see Stiles was giggling. “Your stubble dude” he laughed “it’s goddamn ticklish.” Derek grinned, trailing his teeth over Stile’s ribcage. The laughter descended into a moan, and he could feel Stiles’s hips lift convulsively under him, feel how hard he was. Sitting back on his heels, Derek pulled off his shirt without preamble, rolling his eyes at Stiles’s appreciative hum before diving back in for another kiss.

He could feel long fingers tangling in his hair as he felt for the hem of Stiles’s sweatpants, tracing edges of the material. Stiles moved upwards, which had the duel effect of both allowing Derek access and creating the best kind of friction. When he slid Stiles’s pants off, Derek couldn’t help but to just take a second and _look_. Sure, he had seen Stiles naked before, but the kid had been shivering and crying and Derek had only wanted to shield his eyes and bundle the sad creature up. Now, that he was actually _looking_ at Stiles, it was kind of like some rare book had been opened in front of him.

Said rare book was now propped up on his elbows, staring expectantly at him, his eyes wide and slightly nervous.

“What?”

Derek smiled at the faux-challenge, the last piece of grit Stiles could possibly flick at him, a little reminder that the alley-cat Stiles still had claws thank you very fucking much. Weirdly enough, it grounded Derek more than any deep breath ever could. He kissed Stiles, open mouthed and dirty, sucking hot marks into the tribal wolves on his neck. It didn’t take Stiles long before he was fumbling around at Derek’s jeans, muttering “these things need to come off like, oh my god _now_.”

After _finally_ disentangling themselves of all clothes, Derek bore back down onto Stiles, feeling the starting sparks of pleasure as Stiles’s hard cock brushed against his. A flailing inked hand grabbed his own, practically shoving it down to where it was clearly most needed. Taking the not-so subtle hint, Derek thumbed at the tip of Stiles’s cock, eliciting a high whine, before beginning to jack himself and Stiles off slowly, his forehead pressed to Stiles’s, as it had been in that grotty bathroom less than twelve hours before.

_Slower. Slower._

_Oh._

_God._

He buried his face in Stiles’s neck, inhaling his hot-water scent, revelling in the small, gorgeous breaths he made. As the pleasure sharpened, Derek slowed down his movements, allowing Stiles to pepper kisses all over his mouth, impatiently urging him to keep going. Instead, he rolled to the side and searched blindly in his drawer, hoping his Boy Scout training served him well. _First Class Badge for Preparation Hale, earn it._ With a grunt of triumph, he extracted the bottle of lube and condom, allowing Stiles to climb on top of him. He straddled Derek’s hips, creating more delicious friction.

“Mmm, uh, how d’you want to do this?”

Stiles looked at him like he had just announced his intentions to secure an extra head to his body.

“Uh, want you to fuck me, duh.”

Derek couldn’t help but sitting up convulsively, pressing deep kisses to Stiles’s jaw line, hearing the crackling of the condom wrapper as Stiles ripped it open with his teeth. _Je-sus._ He could feel his eyes practically rolling back in his head as slender fingers wrapped around his cock, jerking him off a few times before expertly slipping the condom on. Stiles twisted off him onto his back, pulling Derek with him, before looking back up at him. He seemed to be making it very clear what position he wanted. Under Derek’s questioning eyebrow, he rolled his eyes.

“I want to be able to see you, jackass.”

Derek nodded, pressing a sharp kiss to Stiles’s lips, his heart beginning to hammer as he began to realise how _real_ this was. His hand fumbled unconsciously for the lube, flicking open the cap without any real direction from his brain. His senses came crashing into full technicolor light when Stiles bucked exquisitely underneath him as Derek traced his entrance with a slick finger.

“Shiiiiit that’s _cold_.”

Derek couldn’t help smiling, pressing the finger in. Stiles inhaled slightly, moving away instinctively before grinding down, allowing Derek to enter a second, writhing and sighing as he did. Jesus Christ, he had always thought of prepping as a mere practical nicety before this. Now he literally couldn’t think of anything better than just fingering Stiles into oblivion. _Times for that later Hale, focus on the task at hand._

Heh, at hand.

The task of fucking Stiles.

Oh god.

This was really happening.

The full force of the realisation threw Derek into a hard kiss against Stiles’s lips while he slipped another finger in, working him open. Stiles’s hard on had initially gone down slightly in the first uncomfortable moments of entry, but now Derek could feel it brushing against his stomach as he sucked Stiles’s tongue. He began to pick up the pace slightly, feeling Stiles’s harsh breaths against his cheek.

“Jeeeesus fucking Christ Derek, consider the waters tried and tested, yessir lets _go.”_

Derek snorted, drawing out his fingers and bracing his hand above Stiles’s head on the pillow. With a kind of focus that he didn’t think even he was capable of, Derek guided himself in. Stiles moved with him, squeezing his eyes shut and gripping onto Derek’s forearm until he bottomed out. There was a frozen moment, when all petting and crooning stopped. Derek looked down at Stiles, who had opened his eyes, big and brown and so full of something _more_.

He knew him. He knew Stiles.

“Yo, Picasso, less staring more moving.”

“Bossy.”

Stiles huffed out a laugh that quickly turned into a high pitched whine as Derek made the initial thrust. The moment he began to move, the pleasure that had been previously rolling through him now became something altogether more tangible, sharper. The dreamy haze of steam that had coloured their trip from bathroom to bedroom had completely lifted as the world seemed to align with every thrust. And Stiles...Stiles was perfect. All harsh breaths and soft swearwords, the way he’d wriggle and moan, or croon when Derek got just the right angle.

It didn’t take long before Derek could sense that Stiles was as close to coming as he was. Their rhythm had become more frenzied, there were less kisses, and all Derek could think to do was to wrap his hand around Stiles’s cock, trying to match the pace of his thrusts.

“ _Derekkk-”_

Derek swallowed down Stiles’s shout with a kiss, feeling the come between his fingers, fucking him through it, taking him all in before the world became hazy at the edges.

_Holy -_

Biting down on Stiles’s shoulder, Derek came. And for a second, just for one second, he was sure he would knock anybody out who challenged him that there was nothing else in this world but him, the beautiful boy beneath him and the sparks running up and down their bodies.

All he could do was breathe as Stiles pushed the heels of his palms down between Derek’s sweat-soaked shoulder blades, smoothing out whatever tensions were there until Derek felt boneless and sated. He pulled out, ignoring Stiles’s grimace at the disgusting squelching sound. Derek tied and tossed the condom in the bin before tugging up the blankets and plastering himself to Stiles’s back. Stiles snuggled back into him, nuzzling his forehead against Derek’s chin.

Neither of them said a word as the dim morning light crept through the blinds, soaking the bedroom in a dull grey. Not a single fucking word. Stiles’s motormouth had finally found its off switch, and Derek could feel him falling asleep, snuffling and clutching his arm a little tighter. As he felt his lids get heavier, Derek tried to register his mild surprise over how quickly he himself fell asleep.

 

X X X

 

“What age did you lose your virginity?”

“Seventeen.”

“Who with?”

“Jeremy Alweiss. He was the reverend’s son. Not exactly forthcoming with our relationship.”

“Ah.”

“What about you?”

“D’you really want to know?”

“No, actually.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Stiles carded his fingers through Derek’s hair, grinning as Georgie attempted to haul her fat doggy self onto the couch with them. The kid was looking much better lately, Derek had to admit. The dips in his collarbone had become less pronounced, his face had slightly lost its gauntness. His eyes, once ferocious and dazed, were now alert as he turned to the chirruping timer on the kitchen counter.

“Ugh, med time.”

Derek sighed sympathetically, at the same time trying to eyebrow-communicate that it was of paramount importance that Stiles swallowed that entire pharmaceutical chain-worth of medication. Or, as the doctor simply called it, take his prescription. Pills to make him happy, pills to calm him down, pills to stop the nightmares, pills to stop the shakes, pills to make him eat, pills to stop the headaches...Derek had lost count. In some of his odder dreams he’d seen himself and Stiles taking baths in multicoloured pools of narcotics. But Jesus Christ, he thought he’d keep that one to himself, because that would be a hard one to explain to Stiles.  And of course, all that crap aside, Stiles’s daily doses of methadone were enough to remind Derek how far they still had to go.

After chugging what looked like a gallon of water, Stiles sat back down on the couch, tucking his knees under his chin. Rolling his eyes, Derek went back to the kitchen counter and refilled the glass of water.

“And the one you’ve got under your tongue. I don’t care how nauseous it makes you, c’mon.”

A heated little Stiles-glare pricked the corners of his gaze. Taking the water from Derek, he pulled a face as he swallowed the last remaining pill. With his fingers, Derek tried to straighten his lips into a smile before it snapped back into a grimace. After trying again, Derek decided the best tactic was distraction, and kissed the whiny bastard. That seemed to work, as Stiles hummed contently against his mouth, clambering onto Derek’s lap.

Smiling, Derek slid his hands down the back of Stiles’s pants, bringing him forward while grinding him down. _Oh good god Hale, who did you impress in a past life._ Stiles whimpered against him, before exposing his inked neck for Derek to press his mouth to. It hadn’t taken Derek to discover that Stiles enjoyed the extremely vanilla kink of neck kisses. “I like wolf-kisses, okay?” Stiles had laughed as Derek scraped his teeth along his neck.

Derek could feel his jeans tightening as Stiles’s hands moved underneath his t-shirt, tracing gently over his chest. He could feel fingers reaching to undo his buckle, creating a kind of delectable pressure that he couldn’t help but rise up to meet –

“Oh shit!”

“Wha?” Derek felt slightly punch-drunk, staring up at an almost distraught looking Stiles. “What? What is it?”

“ _Hardcore Pawn_ is on! They’re going to reveal who was stealing all that fuckin’ gold jewellery! Ten bucks it’s that bearded fucker with the sunglasses, I mean who the fuck wears sunglasses in a pawn shop all day, that fucker is just _asking_ to be kicked out on his ass –“

Sighing, Derek made space at his side for Stiles to tuck himself into, and flicked on the TV. He and his dick were in complete agreement: Stiles should get out more.

 

X X X

 

“Were many people there, you know, for Isaac?”

Stiles voice was as thick and dull as the dust he had been inhaling for the past three hours. Today, Derek could safely say, was not a good day. He had come home from Isaac Lahey’s (Lahey, the kid’s second name was Lahey) funeral to find the kitchen in a state that would indicate that a small hurricane had recently passed through. Knives, pots, pans, cutlery and every other good goddamn  culinary implement Derek owned were strewn across the tiles. Instinctively, his gaze had travelled towards the top-right cabinet, where he kept Stiles’s methadone. He always kept it locked, but Stiles knew that Derek was aware he could pick locks as easily as Derek could do a one-armed push-up. So the lock, more than anything, was a symbol of trust.

Surprisingly by the look of it, a symbol of trust that hadn’t been broken. The lock was still there, securely in place. The cabinet door however, was a different story. It looked like Stiles had tried to throw every sharp implement he could find at the door. Derek could just imagine him, in one of his feral moods, screaming and wailing incomprehensibly at the cabinet door, unable to verbalise the kind of pain he was in. Scratches and small chunks of wood littered the floor and counter below. Some, Derek had noticed, were dyed red, as they were floating in a small spatter of blood.

He had charged through the apartment, yelling for Stiles, sending the already sufficiently-spooked dogs scampering in all directions. It was only when he came to their bedroom, that he remembered Stiles’s old hiding place. He crouched down to look under the bed.

It had quickly become obvious that neither heaven nor hell was going to move Stiles out from under the bed. This meant that Derek had to get the first aid kit and try to play nurse from a horizontal position, cleaning the nasty cut that sliced across Stiles’s grotesque smiley face on his palm. Stiles had weakly protested that one of the carving knives had slipped, but seemed to take Derek’s stony silence as evidence enough that no one believed that story. He settled for turning in towards Derek’s neck, burying his face behind his ear, mumbling into the quiet and stifling air.

“Was there loads of people? Flowers? That stuff?”

“There...There were a few people, yeah.”

Derek didn’t want to tell Stiles that he, a disgruntled Reyes and an old junkie called Andy were the only ones at the cremation, apart from the priest. No one had come forward to claim the body, so the funeral home had decided on a prompt cremation, for financial purposes. Andy had shuffled off with the urn, promising to spread the ashes “somewhere the kid would have liked.” The cynical part of Derek couldn’t help but suspect he was going to sell the urn on the black market. Reyes had voiced the same concern in a loud whisper within earshot of the scandalised priest.

He knew that Stiles was feeling guilty that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go with him. But, as he himself had told the kid, who knows who would be watching the sad little occasion. No one, Derek had soon discovered.

No one at all.

They lay there for a few more minutes, Derek running a comforting hand up and down Stiles’s back.

“It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I mean, he was there and I was there – and – and-“

“What?”

“I don’t fucking _know_ dude. All I know is... that I’m so scared. You know, of the future.”

“I know.”

Neither of them said what they both knew Derek was really saying. _Me too. Me too._

X X X

 

_“Derekkkk.”_

“Mmm?” Derek cracked an eye open. “You can’t be up for another round already, give me like, fifteen minutes and I’ll be with you but –“

Stiles lightly slapped the side of Derek’s head without lifting his face from where it was buried in the pillow. Seriously, how does the kid _breathe_ like that? “No asshat, there’s someone at the door.”

Derek glanced at the alarm clock beside him. It was ten-thirty, and had already been shaping up to be a pretty glorious lazy Sunday morning. Derek had woken up to Stiles’s hand slipping down his boxers and a frankly filthy request in his ear.

_Heaven and heaven and fucking heaven._

Slipping on his sweatpants, he padded through the apartment, wincing at the cool floorboard as he stepped over the sleeping dogs. As he reached for the latch, he said a quick silent prayer that Cora hadn’t decided that that art school was stifling her creativity again.

It wasn’t Cora.

“Oh, um, hey Erica.”

The she-wolf herself was stepping into the apartment without so much as a perfunctory greeting. Sweeping her blonde curls back, she nibbled her bottom lip, exposing her canines which were, huh, kind of sharp under close inspection. Her eyes darted around the apartment as if she expected a really awful surprise birthday party that she just wasn’t in the mood for, thank you very fucking much.

_Keep it together Hale, you’re Stallone, you’re McClane, you’re the T-1000, you’re – oh fuck me, has she been filing her nails into points?_

“Didn’t know you were the creative type Hale.”

Derek swallowed, following her steely gaze to the numerous watercolours, sketches and paint-sodden bits of paper Stiles had stuck up on the apartment walls. “Erm, yeah. Relaxing...kind of takes the edge of all the...” He was becoming painfully aware there were a few unfortunately predominantly placed sketches that were clearly of him. Maybe he would tell her he was really into Frida Kahlo?

Erica didn’t seem to be paying much attention though, her mouth slightly downturned at the corners. Derek had never noticed what a difference the self-satisfied smirk made to her overall features. Without it, her eyes looked bigger, younger.

“You seen Stiles around lately?”

Derek nearly choked on his own spit, if he was honest. Attempting to arrange his face into what he hoped was a calm and mildly surprised expression in front of one of the city’s top interrogators, he shook his head confusedly.

“No, not since the raid, why?”

Reyes ran her nails through her hair exasperatedly. “Well that’s it isn’t it? It’s been like, nearly a fuckin’ month at this stage and I haven’t seen him _anywhere_. It’s like he’s disappeared into fuckin’ thin air. Man...It’s worrying me.”

Derek picked at the corner of the kitchen doorframe, willing himself not to look away. Reyes was like a backwards gorgon, you avoided her gaze, and she would smell a rat instantly.

“I’m sure he’s fine, you know how he is...”

“Yeah, I do know how he is! A self-destructive little shit who up until recently had half of the shadiest cunts in the city baying for his blood!” Erica’s voice cracked up a notch, moving from sultry growl to a higher pitch. “I knew there was something wrong when he didn’t go to that Lahey kid’s funeral, I knew it. I mean fucking hell Derek, we should have checked! He could be anywhere right now, either in some smack den trying to shoot away the fucking _trauma_ we left him with, or god fucking forbid, in some _dumpster_ chopped up into little bits!  We should have checked Derek! We should have –“

“ _Jesus fuck_ Erica, he’s fine!”

“How the hell do you know that? We haven’t seen a single tattooed inch of that kid for literally _weeks_ now, and he was walking a fine line as it was! Do you know how _cold_ it is at night at the moment Derek? What if –“

“Erica –“

“No, listen to me Derek, we need to-“

“ _Erica –“_

“You tell me to calm down and I swear to god I will have your balls as earrings Hale, I swear to –“

“ERICA!”

Into the silence, Derek took a deep breath.

“Come on out Stiles.”

Stiles, who clearly had been eavesdropping from behind the door, shuffled sheepishly out into the living room. Helpfully, he was wearing nothing but their bed sheet. Wonderful. In the stifling silence that followed, Derek wondered if he bolted now, could he possibly cross the Mexican border before nightfall.

Reyes was looking a bit like the time Flanagan had told her that Andrews in Homicide was married with two young kids. So Derek inwardly saluted the sacrificial example of poor old Andrews and did what he didn’t: ducked. 

“WHAT. THE. FUCK DEREK?! HE’S A _CHILD_ FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!”

Swerving and dodging from her outstretched talons, Derek protested in between each swipe. “He’s nineteen! Possible even twenty!”

“We’re not really sure.” Stiles helpfully supplied.

“HE’S A WITNESS! HE’S AN INFORMANT! HE’S A HOOKER AND A GODDAMN _JUNKIE_ –“

The moment she broke off, glancing apologetically at Stiles, Derek took the tatical decision to grab the hand that was waving dangerously close to his corneas. “Stiles I’m sorr-“ Erica broke off, looking  confused and upset, not even noticing that Derek had disarmed her in her pursuit.

Stiles looked a bit lost for a moment before shrugging. “S’okay. I’m not like, ashamed of who I am or whatever. I’ve just always done what I needed to do to survive. Done the best I could with what I had, I guess. You might be ashamed of that but I’m fuckin’ not.”

It took Derek a second to meet Stiles’s ferocious gaze, knowing that those words were as much meant for him as they were for Reyes. It wasn’t like they never talked about Stiles’s past. It was just that whenever something took a turn for the particularly visceral, it was Derek’s gut reaction to change the subject. He had always thought that he did it to protect Stiles from getting upset. But now that he thought about it, Stiles had lived through it all. So he must have been protecting someone else.

He nodded almost imperceptibly at Stiles, horrified to feel a lump growing in his throat. Stiles’s gaze softened, and he looked back at an astounded Reyes.

“You should probably know though, I’m off the gear.”

 “Y-you’re what?” Erica sounded like she was trying to clear a small double-decker bus from her throat.

“Derek got me to detox. I’ve been off it nearly two months now.”

Had it been only two months? It felt like years ago that Derek nearly flattened a shivering and drenched Stiles at 2AM and challenged him to a stupid dare. Now he couldn’t imagine not hearing Stiles sing awful punk songs in the shower or the familiar thud meaning he’d knocked something over again. In the past few weeks he’d become so used to waking up to Stiles sprawled across him like some octopus with boundary issues. There were an equal amount of Bran Flakes and Lucky Charms in the cupboard now and Derek couldn’t sit comfortably during a movie unless it had Stiles’s snarky commentary. If Stiles wasn’t there, Derek didn’t know he would be able to cope.

Wow, that was a scary thought.

Stiles shuffled towards him and Reyes, thankfully keeping the bed sheet firmly in place. He extended his left arm, turning it so the inside of his elbow was exposed. Derek had never really paid much attention to Stiles’s track marks before – they were something he preferred not to stare at. Besides, he could always pretend that the aching little marks were just another hiccup on Stiles’s alright-fuck-it tattoo career. But now, as he stared at the small interruptions in the ink, he realised: that’s all they were, small interruptions. Stiles’s track marks had faded down to scars.

“All because of Derek.”

It felt strange hearing Stiles say those words. Derek wanted to shake him, to tell him how _untrue_ a statement like that was. Sure, he had given Stiles a place to stay but that’s about it. He wasn’t the one who lay on the bathroom floor puking his guts out, he wasn’t the one who sweated out a nightmare an hour for a full week, he wasn’t the one who had screamed and screamed and screamed with need and want but had refused to give in. Derek had done fuck all but stand around helplessly.

“All. Because. Of. Derek.” Stiles said the words slower now, and Derek smiled because this was one thing Stiles couldn’t convince him of, just like he’d never be able to convince Stiles that it was all because of him that Derek felt more _present_ in his own life than he had in years –

“OW! FUCK ERICA!”

Derek’s right ear felt as if someone had applied a skillet with a serious amount of force. He had forgotten that Erica took off Tuesday nights for her krav maga classes.

“WHY THE _FUCK_ DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!”

He shielded himself from another possible onslaught of Israeli street-fighting tactics, but Derek couldn't help feeling that the initial blow had cleared the air slightly.

“Because it didn’t start out like – like _this.”_ He gestured to the bed sheet around Stiles. “It started out just like, helping him and stuff and then everything got a little, y’know, out of control.”

“Clearly.” Erica’s tone was approaching winter frost.

Derek felt a slight nudge at his knuckles. He took Stiles’s hand in his, feeling the stubby, bitten nails trace along the palm of his hand. He couldn’t help smiling down at his bare feet.

Erica blew an errant curl out from her eyes. Derek was forcefully reminded of a highly unimpressed female rhinoceros. “I don’t know whether to puke or to squee at how cute you two are, and I’m not comfortable doing either of them here. So, here’s what’s going to happen. I am going to walk out that door and leave you two to your Sunday sex. But Derek, tomorrow night we are going to O’Grady’s and you will tell me everything, and I mean _everything_. Also, you’re buying.”

With that, she flounced out the door, leaving Stiles and Derek agog in her wake, still hand in hand. Stiles was the first to crack up.

“Duuuude, you were shitting it.”

“Excuse me, I was doing nothing of the sort. I’m Detective Derek Hale of the city’s Narcotics Division and I do not shit it, thanks very much.”

Stiles snorted, wiping his hand on the bed sheet. “So your hand was sweating with manly courage then, was it?”

“Shut up.”

 

X X X

 

“Are you Derek Hale?”

Derek nearly dropped the grocery bags he was attempting to hang from each individual finger while fishing out his keys from his jeans pockets. He didn’t care how much Stiles’s bitched, he was going to start wearing looser jeans.

He turned to face a boy with a dark complexion and a slightly crooked jaw. He looked familiar, but Derek couldn’t think where he had seen him before. He looked scruffy enough to have appeared in a line-up, but not scruffy enough for an interrogation gig. Jesus, is that really how he was sorting out acquaintances these days?

“Uh, depends. Who wants to know?”

It had been a month since shit went down at the raid, but Derek was still wary. People around this part of the city kept grudges burning for a long time, and who know who they fucked over by disrupting that transaction. And by fucked over, he of course meant caused the hyper-violent deaths of some people’s brothers and arrested the city’s major wholesale supplier of smack. No biggie, forgotten about in no time.

Stiles had been going out more recently, though. The other night they even had a real date, with dinner and a walk and handjobs at the back of the cinema, the whole experience. They’d gone clothes shopping yesterday, with Stiles picking out some long overdue graphic t-shirts and artistically ripped jeans to replace Derek’s wifebeater and sweatpants. Predictably, Stiles had refused to exit the pants until Derek gave him reason to.

This kid didn’t seem threatening though, and Derek had prided himself in learning the variety of stances that indicated possible threats. If anything, he kind of looked like a big puppy, all dopey brown eyes and soft dark hair. Derek noticed a smattering of tattoos running down the boy’s arms, the style of which looked familiar.

“I’m Scott.”

“Oh.”

Derek didn’t really know what to say. He wasn’t sure how to communicate to someone that he had never met before that the last time he had seen him was hanging in sketch-form beside the laundry basket last week. Stiles was right, he did look uncannily like Scott the dog. Derek fought against the strong urge to grin. He wanted to know why the kid was only turning up now.

Scott bit his lip, casting his eyes around clearly not sure whether he should be here or not. “I just, uh, wanted to tell him that I’m leaving.”

In the distance, Derek could see a tall, slender girl with raven-coloured waves of hair leaning against the dirt-grey wall of the auto-repair, looking directly at Scott. An oversized hoodie hung gracefully off her thin frame, and she was digging her hands moodily into her front pocket. He suspected that she probably hadn’t had a decent wash in a month, but she still somehow managed to look a Vogue model. Derek was willing to bet that this was Allison.

“Oh well, uh, why don’t you come up to the apartment, Stiles will be glad to see –“

“No! I mean er, no.” Scott scrubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “He’ll – y’know, I mean...He’ll just be there with the big eyes and the talking and – Well, you know what he’s like. I can’t have any second thoughts. It’s easier this way.”

Derek decided to let the silence hang horribly. Scott took the bait.

“I wasn’t there for him, I know that.” He swallowed, suddenly appearing to find Derek’s shoes fascinating. “We’re brothers, I’m sure he’s already told you that. Since we were kids we always stuck together. He had all the ideas and I just followed along, because you just can’t help following Stiles, right? I mean, dude is like electric or something, some kind of fuckin’ rubber band, always twisting and snapping around. And the great part is, sometimes he’ll follow you. Like, he’d walk into a pool of gasoline with a lit road flare if it meant following me. I know that.”

Derek fixed his eyes on Scott’s shoulder, refusing to meet the brown eyes, so strangely similar to Stiles’s. Scott coughed, trying to clear his throat.

“Me and Stiles...We’re brothers man, we’re brothers. It’s just...I’m not a very good brother.”

Derek wasn’t sure if this was a bullshit excuse or not, so he kept his mouth shut.

“I just need to know, y’know, when I leave, that he has someone. To look out for him.”

Derek looked straight at Scott, suddenly feeling a rush of ferocious pride. “Yeah, he has someone.”

“Good.”

Scott straightened his posture from his hunched position and turned back towards Allison. Before he made it a few metres away, he turned back to Derek. “Tell him I hope he finds the woods, okay?” Derek nodded, not entirely sure of what he was agreeing to. He watched as Scott caught the thin girl’s hand and slipped into one of the deep grey alleyways.

As he ascended the apartment steps, he thought about what he would say to Stiles, who was probably still trying to play checkers with Millie (He was convinced she was gifted). He couldn’t blame Scott, not really. As Erica would put it, he probably had his own shit to deal with.

Sometimes, in his tiny world with Stiles, it was hard to remember that they were living in a big city. It was a massive shitstorm of problems and confusion, with condoms breaking, bills turning red, knives and guns and all manner of things to break people’s hearts. The more Derek thought about it, the more it made him glad to think that within it all, just for a moment, he and Stiles had their side of the story.

_Yeah, he has someone._

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asides: Stiles got an Invader Zim t-shirt, not because he's seen the show (don't worry, he's getting on to it), but because it looks fuggin' punk rock. Also, his passion for Hardcore Pawn mirrors my passion for Hardcore Pawn ad yes that is a storyline in one of the episodes and oh my god don't tell anyone.
> 
> Also: You may have noticed I am not good at porn. I apologise. Feel free to assume they do it and just carry on with the next bit. 
> 
> Your comments and kudos are what drags me back to the computer. That, and an everlasting love for that little bastard Stiles.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOOM. Surprise last chapter. I've skipped on a bit in time, and not everything is uphill from the last chapter, so don't hate me. Just read til the end. STILES GETS A SPEECH AND EVERYTHING.
> 
> Forgive and point out mistakes, 3AM and I am high on fic-finishing endorphins.

 

On reflection, Derek had decided to tell Greenberg to kindly fuck off.

He couldn’t lie to himself; it was probably his finest moment as Detective Derek Hale of the city’s Narcotics Division. Admittedly, the day had had a rough start. He had dragged his exhausted carcass into the office bullpen, still rolling the events of the previous night over in his mind. Stiles had let loose a pretty monumental manic episode that had seemed to ricochet off the walls for hours after. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it coming though. The doctor had warned that attempting a third detox so close to the last one would trigger what he referred to as “substantial bouts of extreme emotional distress.” Derek wasn’t sure if that covered an attempt to cave in the kitchen wall though the medium of head-slamming, or screaming continually in a locked bathroom, but somehow Stiles covered both of those integral bases. At first, he had agreed with the doctor, and tentatively suggested that Stiles might take some time to step back and revaluate before jumping into another detox, but Stiles was insistent.

“The longer I’m on it, the longer it’s gonna take to get off it. I’m telling ya dude, after doing that first Great White Shark, I’m chillin’ with the guppies.”

(Stiles had been recording Derek’s shark programmes for him while he was at work. It meant that a lot of his metaphors were becoming marine-related.)

While Derek had to admit that Stiles had a point, as nothing, _nothing_ compared to the first withdrawal, he wasn’t prepared to admit that this twisted kind of tapering off was the best route for them. Then again, it wasn’t like he was surprised. He had known that Stiles was going to fall back into old ways the moment Stiles opened the door and said brightly “I’m going out!” Later on, after all the roaring, the screaming and the grand, ferocious proclamations of love (y’know, a normal night in the Hale-Stilinski household), Derek had sat at the kitchen table and wracked his brains, trying to remember if he had said something, or if anything had happened to trigger a relapse. He had ruled out the important dates in Stiles’s life (his mom’s anniversary, Lydia’s anniversary), and aside from feeling shitty about how short the list was, he couldn’t come up with anything else. In the end, he had to simply flatten his palms against the table and come to the conclusion that in Stiles’s head, a threshold had been reached.

But it wasn’t that Stiles was weak. Derek explained this to him that night, holding onto the wrists of the strung out kid sitting on the edge of the bathtub sobbing. No, he wasn’t weak.  See, it was this city. This goddamn city. Just nauseating fizzled out neon signs and grey spattered pavements. Stiles had said it himself; he had come out of the womb on smack. He was a ready-made addict born into the heroin capital this side of the country. _It wasn’t his fault._ And the more Derek whispered it into the Stiles’s neck, the more he believed it himself. He believed it so much so that by the time the next relapse around, he had locked the doors and slipped _Raging Bull_ into the DVD player before he even had time to process.

So, yeah, admittedly Detox Number Three had hit them pretty hard. To make matters worse, Stiles had begun to exist in this strange space between what Derek assumed was agoraphobia and claustrophobia. When he mentioned this to Stiles, he had grimly marched to the dumpster with Derek’s barstool-psychology books stuffed under his arm. Yet Derek couldn’t help noticing that, depending on the episode, he would alternatively curl up under the bed or claw at the walls, gasping for air. Derek couldn’t stand it any longer and neither could his fucking walls. So on that morning, standing zombified in the bullpen, Derek decided to do something he had never done before: ask for holiday time.

Yeah, he thought, as he made his way to the Chief’s office, this is what they both needed. Get out of this city for a week, inhale some air that wasn’t laden with nicotine, and take Stiles to see the fucking sea or something. He knocked before opening the door. The Chief beckoned him in.

“Haaaaaaale.” He had an annoying habit of elongating Derek’s name to the point when he felt like some kind of prized derby horse entering the room. He had always assumed that the Chief has some kind of discomfort with single-syllable names, but he had never called Erica “Reeeeeeeyes”. In any case, Derek was not a fan of the Chief, and he didn’t know how the Chief felt about him. Which, y’know, made him even less of a fan.

“Can you spare a moment?”

“Certa-fucking-loutely I can kid, this paperwork is driving me up the damn wall.” Cramming the remainder of his burrito into his mouth and messily sucking the sauce off his fingers, he tossed the crumpled up tin foil wrapper to the wastepaper basket and missed. Derek winced. When it came to manners, Stiles was the Duke of fucking Kent compared to the Chief.

“Erm, yeah, so Reyes and I are almost finished the de Bláca case, just some stuff to write up and we’re all set for processing.”

The Chief nodded, his double chin creasing into a quadruple as he balanced his head against his fist. “Yeah, yeah, stellar fucking work kid. You and Reyes make one hell of a team.”

There was a pause during which he looked at Derek as if to say “is that all?”, so Derek hurried on. “Uh yep, I mean, yes, thanks, thank you very much sir, I was just bringing that up because I figure I’ve managed to free up some time for myself, and er, I was coming to ask you for maybe a –“

“No.”

The remark was so offhand, so flippant, that Derek didn’t quite catch it at first. It sounded more like a bored exhalation of air. He could feel his face freeze mid sentence, his lips still pursed together.

The Chief leant back in his chair, having clearly become disinterested with this whole conversation. “Sorry Hale, no can do. Busy time at the office, you know that. Cases are coming in thick and fast. That big bust you guys orchestrated few months back disassembled the whole trade, everything’s fragmented now, and I need all my eyes and ears out there.”

Derek frowned. That didn’t make any sense. Sure, the raid had fragmented the coherence of the suppliers; but all in all, it had become as confusing for the cornerboys as it was for the cops. They all had retreated to their respective hide-outs to lick their wounds. So if anything, things had been quieter than they had been in a long time.

Aware that he was sauntering into a minefield, Derek coughed awkwardly. “It’s just that...uh...Well, with all due respect sir; you gave O’Dwyer two weeks off just last Tuesday. And I’m only asking for like, a week at most Chief, I’ve never asked –“

The Chief looked like he was trying to swallow a piece of stale bread, without much success. The purple blotches appearing on his thick neck was usually a warning sign to duck under the nearest available form of shelter, but Derek tried to hold firm. He deserved this, he knew he did. He had put up with enough shit in the past year to deserve at least one fucking week off.

“Hale” the Chief managed to grit out, “Listen, Hale...Hale, I’m going to level with you. If you think I’m going to give you time off to go galavanting around with that little toe rag of a hooker, you’ve got another thing –“

“What?”

A kind of numbness descended on Derek’s mind as he tried to process the man’s words. Hooker? Stiles, he was talking about Stiles. Of course he was talking about Stiles you idiot, who the fuck else would he be talking about. But who had told him? Erica? She wouldn’t, Derek had made her swear up and down, on both her mother and Stevie Nick’s life. Even then, she had some inkling of the monumental effort they both put into keeping their relationship afloat. She knew what it had cost them to get here. She would never casually throw facts about her partner’s personal life around the force. But then who?  Had someone –

“Before your face gets stuck like that Hale, lemme tell you that this is a conversation I’ve been meaning to have with you, y’know, when it ever gets brought up.” The Chief leant forward, fidgeting with the corner of a file on his desk. “I was at dinner with Greenburg and his lady last Friday, and he mentioned he was around your area the other week and that he saw some tattooed freak throwing some stuff into the dumpster beside your apartment block. All he was saying was that you lived in a real shitty neighbourhood. Call it a fuckin’ cop’s intuition” he tapped the side of his nose, “ but I knew, I _knew_ that it was that hooker informant we had.”

“He’s not a freak.”An ugly, hot, bubbling sensation was beginning to creep up the back of Derek’s throat. _This was not happening, this was not happening._

“Really? Is that all you took from that? Because I had a look at the kid’s rap sheet and whoah, that is a shit ton of baggage to be taking into your home Hale.”

_You have no fucking idea._

The Chief stood up abruptly. He was deceptively light on his feet for a man who could be described as elephantine in shape. “Listen Hale, I’m trying to be discrete about this whole business, but the fact of the matter is that you’re fucking an informant who is, according to his priors, a delinquent junkie who sucks dick for a living. A goddamn male hooker for shit’s sake.”

Derek felt the sensation at the back of his throat practically flood his mouth, and he took a strange kind of pleasure from the venom that dripped from his next words. “Would you prefer it to be a female hooker then sir?”

“Oh get off your fucking politically correct bullshit pedestal Hale; I get enough of that from the goddamn district attorney. God knows we all like a dip in the honey pot every once and awhile, but you’re taking it to the next fucking level.” He stared out the window, wiping his brow, before turning around. “Listen Derek, you’re a damn good detective. Greenburg made a good call putting you forward for Narcotics. I’d hate to see your career ruined on something as fucked as this. All I’m saying is that we can let this slide if you keep it to the back room of your apartment and don’t start parading around like goddamned couple of the year. Have some fucking decency man.”

Derek pressed his lips together and stared straight ahead to the painting that hung over the Chief’s desk. He had always hated that painting. It was some kind of impressionist representation of the city park, except it was all wrong. The huge monument of the brave colonel on the horse was missing his obligatory traffic cone hat, and there was no old junkies shooting up at the base of the statue. There were three kids flying a kite, but he had only ever seen kids lolling on park benches, throwing kicks at grizzled homeless men who lay on benches with newspaper blankets. Where there was a mother holding her child’s hand should have been old Maggie May with her two grocery bags stuffed with rags and an odd dead cat.

Suddenly, Derek felt incredibly tired, and only half of that was down to the two hours of sleep he had gotten last night. He was so tired of trying to make a functional life out of all this. With the White Collar division, he was bored, but with Narcotics, he was desperate. It was strange that the moment he had found someone to care about, his surroundings had started to appear more and more terrible. Or maybe it wasn’t that strange. Who the fuck knows. All he knows is that every morning he woke up with a thought in his head to leave, and not just for Stiles’s sake. For his own too. When he thought about it, mentally he’d probably been clawing at the walls as much as Stiles had these past few months.

The Chief started as Derek’s hand went to his gun. He couldn’t help smiling tightly as he set his sidearm on the table, satisfied with the cold clink it made against the varnished wood. Then he set his badge down, letting his thumb trace along its gold rim. _Serve and Protect._ He looked up to see the Chief staring at him as if he had just produced a machete and chopped off his own arm.

“C’mon Hale, there’s no need to pull that kind of bullshit, I’m only offering some friendly advice about keeping your head above water, it’s –“

Derek put his hands behind his back, a kind of liquid calm sliding over him. “I’ve got my head above water sir, thanks to someone that I have too much respect and love for to keep in a place like this. I’m offering you my resignation. I’ve turned in my badge and gun. I’ll mail you any necessary documents regarding administration.” He exhaled, bouncing on his toes slightly. “Soooo. Yeah. I guess all that’s left to do is...”

He calmly walked around behind the Chief’s desk, removed the park painting from the wall and slammed it over his knee. Hoping he didn’t betray a hint of the screaming pain his left kneecap was trying to communicate to him, he smiled brightly at a dazed Chief and marched out of the room.

He couldn’t remember much about leaving. It felt like he was moving through water. The moment he opened the office door, it was like every monumental guitar riff from every 80s metal band starting to reverberate around him. He was ready to make his slow-mo exit.

 _Suck it Stiles, just as good an actor as you._  

Derek could feel the eyes of his co-workers (ex-co-workers, ex) on him as he made his way to the hall. Suddenly, his vision was obscured by a mass of blonde curls.

“And where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

He grinned down at Reyes, all sharp edges and worried eyes. Like she was going to kick him into a corner while repeatedly asking if he was okay. She knew what was happening. Jesus, anyone that had heard the bang of what was probably a fairly expensive painting over his kneecap knew what was happening. She was probably going to try and make him stay, probably use force if necessary. Probably use force even if it unnecessary. His friend Erica. He took her face in his hand and planted a hard kiss on her cheek.

“You’re really fucking beautiful, you know that?”

He could have sworn he saw a smile trying to squirm out between pursed lips, but he was already through the double doors and into the watery sunlight.

He didn’t spare much time after that. His mind was whirling now, he felt giddy with a mixture of relief and anticipation. _This was it_. He and Stiles were losing this dirtbag city. He swerved around an elderly couple, jogging backwards to apologise for startling them. Narrowly avoiding tangling himself in the lead of a dog and its walker, he slid into the car in one smooth motion and blared whatever stupid punk song Stiles had left on the iPod all the way home.

Forgoing the elevator for the much livelier option of stairs, he raced up before extricating his keys just in time to open his door. Not bothering to spare so much as a glance at the yipping dogs that seemed to soak up the excitement emanating from him, he catapulted to the bedroom where he knew Stiles would be where he left him. His stupid, wonderful boyfriend lying in the centre of the shrine that they had constructed out of their home.

He barely gave the kid time to shuffle up onto his elbows before he was kissing him, not giving a shit how long it’d been since he’d had a shower. Stiles looked startled when they broke apart, his big honey eyes full of questions. Derek knew he probably looked like a madman, panting and wide-eyed. He smiled against Stiles’s forehead, whispering the words he’d wanted to say for months.

“We’re leaving babe.”

Derek swore he felt like Bruce Springsteen or something.

 

X X X

 

“Ugh remember when you _did_ that?”

Derek smiled, shoving his hands deep in his pockets, amused at the look of joy mingled with disgust on Stiles’s face.

“Remember? When you came in all guns blazing? Sweeping me off my feet with your craziness? That was fucking _perfect_ dude.”

Stiles grabbed his hand, intertwining their fingers, pulling Derek towards him. The dead leaves crunched under his step. In the dying light they were a kind of soft orange, the kind of colour Derek had always associated with Lydia, the love before him. Fall in Beacon Hills was always spectacular; there were enough trees for all of the surrounding land to be almost blanketed in varying shades of yellow, orange and red. Their neighbour Danny spent most of his time sweeping up leaves for his mom. Derek didn’t mind them though. Stiles had taken to collecting the most vibrant or interestingly-shaped ones and using them as bookmarks.

Stiles squeezed his hand once and let go of it, sweeping Millie up from where she ran around their legs. He then backpedalled, slapping his thigh for the other dogs to follow.

“C’mon Georgie, c’mon Trigs! Get a last run in before Captain America makes us go home!”

Derek watched, still smiling, as they all disappeared amongst the trees, Stiles’s enthusiastic one-sided conversation intermingling with the excited barks of the dogs. His laughter seemed to ricochet off every tree, as if Stiles was surrounding him, larger than life.

He had seemed so tiny when Derek had introduced him to his family. Luckily, it was only his mother, father and Cora. He wasn’t sure Stiles would be able to handle the entire Hale pack bearing down on him all at once. Although his mom’s eyes had widened when Stiles had taken off his coat and she had a full view of the tattoos, she seemed to have an impulsive need to mother him constantly. Derek had to explain to Stiles that it was perfectly mannerly to at some point refuse food. Still, Derek had to agree with his mom that Stiles needed fattening up. His Dad had acted the same way as when Derek had brought home his high school boyfriend – an awkward clap on the shoulder and the a hasty return to the sanctuary behind his newspaper.

Cora however, was completely enthralled. They had spent a few serious moments having a discussion about a band emblazoned on her t-shirt before Cora had declared that she “liked him better than all of your other boyfriends put together.” Then she asked Stiles to pose for a series of “gritty kinda y’know moody portraits or whatever.” Yep, that was his little sister, the consummate artist “or whatever.” Stiles seemed impressed anyway, and he and Cora were spending a lot of time together. When Derek pointed this out, Stiles grinned and said he was just jealous because “I’ve got a new gal pal and you miss the hell out of Blondie.”

Derek did miss Erica, but he managed to talk to her every now and then. Their conversations mostly consisted of her teasing him about how quiet things must be working in the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department.

“For your information, we’re recently had a load of animal attacks and even a couple of fatalities. Blood, guts, the whole nine yards. So shove those comments up your –“

“Fine fine, when I’m on Saskia Avenue I’ll keep an eye out for any rogue mountain lions” She had laughed.

“Or wolves.”

“Or wolves, you asshat. Give my love to that tattooed little bastard.”

Derek was surprised that he never seemed to feel a pang of jealousy whenever she talked about the life-or-death drug busts she was heading, or the kingpins she had managed to tie up in some kind of legal bind. But for the same reasons, he wasn’t that surprised. He liked coming home at a time that wasn’t obscene, and he was too busy looking forward to goddamn shark documentaries to really miss pressing himself against a doorframe to see if he could hear the telltale sniffing sounds of a crack den. He had tried to miss the division’s watering hole, the backslapping and gargantuan rounds. But all he could remember was the laughter of the previous night in their local when Stiles tried to recreate the Coyote Ugly table dancing scene with Mark’s new girlfriend. He even tried to create rosy pictures of the city that they had left behind, but the vibrancy of the leaves meant that it was hard to remember the grey pavements.

He ducked under a branch, trailing his loose hand through the underbrush, his other holding a handful of worn dog leads. The cool dry air played gently across his face. He came up behind Stiles and nosed at the back of his neck. He jumped slightly, laughing.

“Dude, your nose is _freezing_.”

Derek could remember a time not so long ago when he would reach out to touch Stiles and be almost responsible for an early heart attack. Not that things were perfect now though. Stiles still woke up in the middle of the night, pushing the blankets back and throwing off Derek’s arm, white static screams and a kind of hacking panic rolling through his body. But on nights like those Stiles was trying to say more, talk less, and Derek was trying to listen. Even when the things he heard made him want to put his head under the pillow and never come out. Instead, he just pulled Stiles a little closer or sat by the bathroom door when he refused to open it. All the doctors and the psychiatrists and whatever professional with a medical degree that Derek’s mom could get a hold of said that Stiles was making progress. His medication had been almost halved. Derek felt weird agreeing with those guys.

Stiles had taken this validation as a driving incentive to re-enter the workforce. Luckily, the solicitation business of Beacon Hills wasn’t exactly booming (although Stiles swore that their landlady had a little bit of something going on the side), so instead he had managed to acquire a job at the grottiest diner he could find (“Y’know, so I feel a bit more at home”). Derek had to admit, he was a surprisingly good waiter, sliding easily behind the counter to bear three or four plates to a table of smartass high schoolers, to which he could give as good as he got. For a kid who never appeared to even be aware of the length of his limbs (four broken lamps since they’d arrived, and only twice was it the dogs’ fault), he had pretty remarkable balance. Derek could help but cast his mind back to that first month when they lived together, the day he had come home to find that Stiles had downed a packet of sherbet and played The Floor Is Lava for literally three hours.

Derek had tried to convince him to go back to school, but Stiles had put his foot down. “Go back?” he had asked, astonished, “Dude, you know as well I do that going back for me would be to the sixth grade. Nu uh, I’m all good thanks.” Derek’s GED campaign was ongoing, but for now Stiles seemed satisfied with his job at the diner and his apprenticeship at the only tattoo parlour Beacon Hills had to offer. Last week he had come home and announced “I  swear to fuckin’ god man, I’ve done so many butterfly tramp stamps that I could literally do one in the dark with both my hands tied behind my back and the needle in my teeth.”

When he had related this comment back to Erica one night when they had one of their rare Skype chats, she had made a weird tinkly laugh which prompted Derek to demand that she turn around right now and expose her shame. After a solid fifteen minutes of protestations of youthful ignorance and inebriation, he had managed to control his laughter. Just about. Erica leant back in her chair, tossing her hair back impressively, clearly keen to change the topic. “Stiles, a contributing member of society” she murmured, “who would’ve thought it. Can’t believe I’m saying this Hale, but I think you’ve finally tamed the little bastard.”

Derek had smiled, but he knew that wasn’t true. He could never explain it to Erica, but there was still animal in Stiles’s eyes. It still burned as bright and as pure as the day the heavy metal door swung open and Derek had walked into the interrogation room. Head first collision with loud tattoos, a loud mouth and the kind of gaze that suggested intelligent dissection with a hint of feral. _Fuck you and fuck you for asking._ In that respect, Stiles hadn’t really changed. Hair-trigger survival instincts are never easy to shake off, and Derek still saw the kid in the interrogation room every time Stiles convulsively wrapped his arms around his own waist, like he was trying to fight off some imaginary tremor.

He was doing that now, his arms unconsciously crossed, his hands gripping his sides. Derek could see his fingers tensing and relaxing. Derek stepped forward, trying to put his arms around him. Stiles started and took off laughing, no longer a jagged blade to a raw jugular but more like a new coin, freshly pressed and dropping to the ground. Now that was the kind of change Derek could get on board with. Stiles jogged backwards a few paces, mischief etched on his features.

“You always did love the chase, Hale!”

Grinning as Stiles rocketed away; Derek clicked his tongue at the rest of the dogs and walked further on. Stiles was never far from sight or sound. Derek could see him every now and then, hint of a battered sneaker, a flash of an inked wolf staring at him from between the trees.

“I CAN SEEEEE YOUUUU.”

Stiles only answered back with a howl, which was eagerly returned with a volley of barks by the dogs. Derek shook his head laughing. Stiles had somehow never been able to fully disappear here like he did in the city. That’s how Derek knew he liked it. He couldn’t disappear because he didn’t want to. He liked the big houses and the abandoned gas stations. He liked that there were straight roads seemingly going nowhere. He especially liked the woods.

For some reason, Derek’s mind was cast back to Scott and something he had said. It seemed important, but he couldn’t remember it for the life of him. He was probably too busy being disappointed in the poor kid or something. But anyway, all of that was a faint memory. It was stored along with thoughts of saliva dripping onto the floorboards or the Rorschach blood spatter decorations he tried not to dwell on too much. Stiles had drawn a sketch of Isaac that he had pinned on the inside of their closet door. Derek found himself saying good morning to it before walking into the kitchen to find Stiles sitting cross-legged on the counter eating Lucky Charms. Somehow it meant everything to Derek that no matter where they were, some things stayed the same.

A solid blow hit against him, knocking him out of his reverie. Stiles pressed his lips against Derek’s, cackling wildly as he pushed his feet up into the air, requiring Derek to grip him tightly round the waist.

“You’re batshit insane Stiles Stilinski.”

“A hundred million yeses to that.” Stiles exhaled, looking around him, his arms still loosely wrapped around Derek’s neck. It was dark, but the full moon gave the woods a kind of blue-black shimmer that meant he could still see Stiles’s face. It wasn’t that dark. Not yet. Stiles turned in his arms, leaning his back against Derek’s chest.

“Jesus Derek. If being batshit insane means I get to see the world like this for the rest of my life, then yeah, I’m pretty much a million per cent okay with that. I mean look at this!” He stretched out his arms, as if he was trying to embrace every branch and gasp of crisp cool air that snuck towards him, seeking his comfort. “Look at this, man! This is what I’m _talking_ about! All this holy-mother-of-god sky! I mean, who the fuck knew there was _that_ many stars?! How the hell are we supposed to compete with that? And that’s the great thing dude, that’s the really fuckin’ great thing; we don’t even have to try, because we’re so insignificant in the grand scheme of things or whatever, that we don’t even _need_ them because we’re fucking fantastic all by ourselves! Fuck! I mean, the way you button up your shirt in the morning is way more important to me than that stupid goddamn star right there! And it doesn’t really make any sense but at the same time it _does_ , because no matter how terrible I think I am or how horrible things get, you’ll still love me and not even _think_ about all this crap! I mean, holy shit dude, call it what you will, but you are one magnificent bastard and I want to be insane like, always.”

Derek looked at Stiles, looked directly at him. He drank in the sight of him, his worn t-shirt and faded red hoodie and ripped up jeans. Even in this light, he could see the wolves emblazoned on his neck, the marks on his hands. His stupid, rambling, perfect boyfriend who never knew when to stop talking, and should never ever stop. His ferocious alley cat who never never never gave up. And after all they had been through; to anyone else it would make perfect sense to give up. But somehow it never did to Stiles. That was probably why Derek loved him so much.

“Stiles”

“What?”

“You’re batshit insane.”

 

 

 

THE END

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SEE, TOLD YOU HE'D GET A SPEECH. Even though it made no sense. Still, I kind of wanted it to be that way. 
> 
> So anyway, thank you so much to everyone who has followed this fic, and had patience with my incredibly slow writing pace, it was your wonderful praise and kudos that kept me returning to the keyboard. I really loved writing it, and it was kind of nice letting loose the Derek and Stiles that had been living in my brain for awhile. I hope it ended the way you wanted, because I am too much of a sucker for happy endings to have not given those two something to smile about for a bit.
> 
> So love love love to all of you, you're all excellent.


End file.
